



Book- 



GopyrigtaF 



CDFSRIGHT DEPOSm 



THE INVISIBLE GUIDE 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



Life's Little Things 
Life's Lesser Moods 
The Enchanted Stone 
Adventures Among Pictures 
Days with Velasquez 
Days in Cornwall 
Augustus Saint Gaudens 
The Education of an Artist 
The Diary of a Looker-on 
Turner's Golden Visions 
Rembrandt 

The Post Impressionists 
Brabason: His Art and Life 
The Consolations of a Critic 
The Soldier Boy 



THE 
INVISIBLE GUIDE 



U 0^i'-- BY 

C: LEWIS HIND 



NEW YORK 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MCMXVIII 



j3 64-0 



Copyright, 1917 
By JOHN LANE COMPANY 



28 1917 

©CI.A479715 



TO 
ONE WHO WORE KHAKI 

When you left us — you who were so young, who 
are so young — I saw in a vision the symbol of the 
Lamb washing away the sins of the world. For it 
is the blood of our youth that is saving the world 
— the Lamb slain yet ever with us, and ever 
young, as in the crest of the Knights Templars. 

The Redcoat, once a sad sign of division, has 
gone: it has passed with all the world's false 
apotheosis of war. Khaki is the symbol of this 
war which must end war — Khaki, so quiet, so im- 
placable: Khaki the reconciler. 

How splendid are the rainbow flags of the past 
enshrined in Churches and Capitols, telling of 
splendour, pomp — and division. 

The flag of the future to be placed in Churches 
and Capitols will be of Khaki, telling of the unity 
of the English speaking peoples, who fought side 
by side for Freedom. 

So I place on the cover of this book a Khaki 
Flag, two Khaki Flags, and beneath, supporting 
them, is the Cross, the sad, glad emblem of sac- 
rifice and hope. You, best beloved, who wore 
Khaki, to whom all that follows is dedicated, will, 
in the ampler life to which you are gone — under- 
stand. 



CONTENTS 
PART L— HIS GUIDANCE BEGINS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Dawn on Roof Hill 11 

11. The Soldier-Artist Speaks .... 24 

III. The Soldier-Packer Speaks . . .39 

IV. The Veterans 45 

V. Two Trains 51 

VI. The Stranger 57 

VII. The Sculptor's Vision 65 

VIII. The Australun Comes Home ... 72 

IX. The Nipper 79 

X. The Little Sentinel 86 

XL The Neutral 92 

XII. Joy 100 

XIII. Horrible! 106 

PART II.— HIS GUIDANCE FADES 
I. Jimmy's Brother Is Wounded . . .113 
11. " Something Brooding " 117 

III. How Mars Solved the Problem . . 125 

IV. The Consoler 131 

V. Jimmy's Diary 136 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. Why Should I Be Good? Jimmy's An- 
swer 143 

VII. Why Should I Paint Landscapes? 

Jimmy's Answer 153 

VIII. Jimmy's Double . 161 

PART III.— HIS GUIDANCE RETURNS 

I. The Postcards of Jimmy's Brother . 171 

11. Morphia 176 

III. Safe 186 

IV. A Fellowship of the Fallen . . . 192 
V. Another Dawn on Roof Hill . . . 204 



PART I 
HIS GUIDANCE BEGINS 



THE INVISIBLE GUIDE 



DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

OUR house is among the pines; but lower 
than Roof Hill. 
To reach Roof Hill we must wind through a 
track in a small wood, a track known to few, up- 
wards to the clearing on the summit. Somebody 
once thought of building a house there, but de- 
sisted after he had made the path and opened 
the ground. The wide valley beneath is decked 
with copses, villages, gorse, and a military camp, 
but all detail is lost from the hill, which is the 
roof of our little world. We call it Roof Hill. 

:{: H: H< ^ 3^ He 

Does one ever become accustomed to the sud- 
den sight of the moon in the afternoon? I think 
not. "The moon is up and yet it is not night," 
said Byron, making poetry of the platitude. To- 
day I saw the afternoon moon. It was when I 

went into the garden after receiving a long-dis- 

11 



12 DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

tance telephone from the hospital in London 
saying that Jimmy Carstairs was "as well as 
could be expected" (he had arrived early in the 
morning from France). I went into the garden 
to see if two little flowers of February, a peri- 
winkle and a snowdrop, had survived the frost. 
They had. That was good because the frost was 
now gone, and there was in the air a perceptible 
feeling of spring, a faint warmth and a faint 
scent. Looking up to see, as it were, whence this 
caress of spring had come, I saw the rising moon. 
I saw her and remembered. 

What did I remember? Merely a day in 
high summer (long ago it seems now) when the 
moon was also near the full. Jimmy Carstairs, 
the artist, who was under orders to leave with his 
draft at any moment; Jimmy's brother, the medi- 
cal student, awaiting his commission in the 
R.A.M.C., with four Others and myself, had 
walked up to Roof Hill. There we cooked our 
evening meal; we watched the moon swing clear 
of the fir-trees, and we read poetry aloud. Then 
we sat silent, wondering when we seven would 
foregather again. 

4: 4^ 4: ^ ^ ^ 

A few months have passed. Our hope of 
meeting on Roof Hill seems slight. Jimmy is 



DAWN ON ROOF HILL 13 

badly wounded; Jimmy's brother is in a Cadet 
Battalion, hoping to spend this week-end with us ; 
one of the Others is a nurse in Salonica, and 
another is in charge of a recreation hut in France. 
That leaves three — two of the Others and my- 
self. 

^i^ ^» «^ -^i^ ^0 «^ 

^^ ^* ^^ ^^ *^ *^ 

While I was looking from the snowdrop to the 
moon, and from the moon to the periwinkle, one 
of the Others approached with a telegram. It 
was from Jimmy's brother, and it contained one 
word — "Detained." 

Desolation rose like a mist. In dejection we 
went about our duties, and when darkness fell, 
and revealed the contrasts of the lighted room 
within, and the silvery moonlight without, — I 
said restlessly — "Let us who are left go up to 
Roof Hill and watch the moon swing clear of 
the trees." 

The thought must have been in their minds 
also, for they said nothing, but at once collected 
rugs, and the kettle, and the Kampite outfit, and 
the torches, for the track through the wood is 
dark. It was well we brought the torches, for 
when we reached the top of Roof Hill, the moon 
was hidden by clouds, and all the sky was a dull, 
dirty purple. 



14 DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

The moon was hiding. That was the first 
phase. 

Wrapped in rugs huddled around the slight 
glow from the fire we drank our coffee. Be- 
fore us were two empty cups, placed ready for 
Jimmy and his brother. Fond, foolish hope! 
We talked of our splendid Jimmy, of his readi- 
ness, his bravery, his wisdom, then of Jimmy's 
pictures, those small synthetical, rhythmical, 
symbolical landscapes, so gay in colour, so na'ive 
in treatment, which I shall always maintain were 
the parent of the new movement in landscape. 
Then we spoke of Jimmy himself, of that curious 
aloofness in his temperament, that something, 
when you seemed to be on the point of under- 
standing him entirely, which meant loving him 
entirely, would loom up like a luminous wall. 
It always seemed to me as if Jimmy had a 
knowledge which he was not quite ready to im- 
part, which he wanted us to understand without 
being told. 

Talking thus of Jimmy, with love and longing, 
suddenly the sky became a blaze of light. We 
started to our feet: then seated ourselves again, 
but we still gazed at that wonderful sight. The 
searchlights had suddenly rushed out and up 
from the military camp at the far end of the 



DAWN ON ROOF HILL 15 

valley, and they were now gambolling with one 
another in the sky, straight, rapidly moving, 
spreading pencils of light, now here, now there, 
leaving puffs of iridescence alone in the blue 
vault. Soon the searchlights disappeared sud- 
denly as they had come. Again the sky was 
dark and still, and we noticed that the round 
moon had broken through the clouds. That was 
the second phase. 

Again we talked of Jimmy, of the sequence of 
Atmospheric Effects he had painted; and beneath 
each he had written a bar of music and a few 
lines of verse in harmony with the atmospheric 
effect: we spoke of his consistent equability of 
happiness, in disaster or in success, as if he were 
initiate in joy and knew how to employ his wis- 
dom whatever discords might arise. While we 
were talking we were again startled, but this time 
it was sound, not light, the sound of rapid foot- 
steps. I raised my torch and the glow fell upon 
the white face of Jimmy's brother advancing 
quickly towards us. He stopped abruptly and 
spoke two words — "Jimmy's dead." 

5|e * Hs sjs 5{S * 

Presently he added — "This afternoon at four 
o'clock. It was a hopeless case." Again he 
paused. None of us spoke. He continued: 



16 DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

"It happened at Le Transloy. Jimmy volun- 
teered for patrol-duty because Ashton — ^you re- 
member Ashton at the studio — could hardly 
stand for rheumatism. He was shot by a sniper, 
and while he was being carried back a shell 
caught him in both legs. It's best so. He 
couldn't have got well." 

Jimmy's brother removed his cap, and blew 
out a long breath. Then he said, as if he were 
giving us a piece of news, incredible, but press- 
ing — "Jimmy's dead." 

Again we were startled. For away above the 
military camp a star shell ascended, then an- 
other, and another, illuminating the countryside. 
The star-shells were followed by a cannonade, 
which gradually increased in violence. "Zeps," 
said one of the Others. "No," said Jimmy's 
brother, "Night Ops. They'll stop directly." 

Soon the noise ceased, suddenly as the search- 
lights had been extinguished, and the still sky 
arched effortless over the trouble of man. So, 
I suppose. Eternity arches over the noise of 
Time. The moon had escaped from the clouds. 
That was the third phase. 

We sat by the small fire till past midnight. 
The glow within the boulders, which we had 



DAWN ON ROOF HILL 17 

piled around, showed no light outside. 
Wrapped in our rugs we were quite warm. 

A curious fancy seized me, a fancy so in- 
creasingly insistent that it became a command. 
It was to go to the edge of the plateau and there 
to stand sentinel until dawn. I explained my 
desire. They agreed. I left them huddled in 
their rugs, talking in whispers and gazing at 
the minute glow of fire. 

^t 5|i ^* 3|t 3ji 5fi 

I could see them from the rampart where I 
stood, for the cold light of the moon was strong. 
I seemed to be alone in space — nothing between 
me and Eternity. I spoke aloud, remembering 
a talk I once had with my friend. This is 
what I said: "Jupiter is five hundred million 
miles away. Seeds in the earth, the size of pin- 
heads, are beginning to awaken. Jimmy's dead. 
Jimmy is safe." 

I stood motionless for five minutes watching 
and listening intently; as I watched and listened 
this question came to me. I did not seek it ; the 
question came and I uttered it — "Is Jimmy 
dead?" 

Again I stood quite silent, watching and listen- 
ing. There seemed nobody in the world but me. 



18 DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

I was alone on this inanimate, animate earth, 
already beginning to stir, with her vast measures 
of spring, and above were those still stars pur- 
suing their rabid courses. I spoke again — 
"Jimmy, are you dead?" 

Each of these profound pauses between 
speech and speech was marked by a strange 
experience, which became stranger and stronger 
on each occasion. At first it was only a faint 
consciousness of the presence of Jimmy, as if he 
had passed me, and left the impression of his 
nearness. In the next pause it seemed as if he 
had tarried an instant. In the third pause he 
was with me. I knew it. I called his name 
aloud. I talked to him. I entreated. 

During the fourth pause my attention wan- 
dered, for I was very cold and very fatigued. I 
thought longingly of the rugs and the bit of lire. 
In this pause when my attention had wandered 
his presence was so fugitive that I hardly knew 
he had been with me. During the next pause I 
put every fibre of body, every insight of soul into 
the strict task of watching, as if the whole world 
were in my keeping, and I God's sentinel. At 
once my friend was with me. I looked around, 
and up. The moon was riding high, away from 
all clouds. That was the fourth phase. 



DAWN ON ROOF HILL 19 

I seemed to have additional sensibilities: to 
hear without listening, to see without seeing. It 
was essential to be alone. If anyone had been 
with me, and had spoken, I should have hated 
him. But I should have liked music, deep 
music, such as Beethoven's. Yet why? While 
I watched and waited in rapt communion, sud- 
denly Jimmy was with me completely. He 
spoke, but without words. 

"There was a poet, who entered into life — I 
mean the life here, of which death is the gate — 
a little while before me. Emile Verhaeren was 
his name, a Belgian, who after the war became 
changed. He changed when everything in his 
country cottage in the area of the German ad- 
vance was captured. This was followed by the 
devastation of his country. These events made 
him the poet of revenge. That was right accord- 
ing to your human standards, but wrong, or shall 
I say useless, from the standpoint of the real life 
which is our life here. Though a great poet he 
was not wholly great, because after 1914 he 
allowed hate to master him. That was the un- 
happy human view of the mortal Verhaeren. 
Hate has no reality. Here we prove it. Hate 
cannot exist beside love, as darkness cannot exist 
beside light. 



20 DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

"The real Verhaeren, the poet, with whom all 
that was good in me now coalesces, is the poet 
whose aim in pre-war life was (one who under- 
stood said this of him) 'to overcome existence 
with undying love.' Later, in one of his plays 
he returned to this initiate knowledge, and the 
thesis was that enmity is overcome by goodness. 
Will man never comprehend this? Why do not 
states and rulers try Love as individuals try it 
and succeed? Why does not the world see that 
hate has failed? Hate failed to maintain peace: 
it has failed to win battles. Why not try love? 
It should be undertaken as a business proposi- 
tion. Would Greece be in a worse state than 
she is now had she, when pressed, disbanded 
her army and navy; had her King said — 'I am 
on no side because I am on Love's side. I trust 
my country to that undying Principle.' Think 
it out? Can you not see what would have hap- 
pened? Centuries hence the glory of the Greece 
of Pericles would have paled before the glory 
of the Greece of Constantine. The real modem 
world would have dated from that hour. 

"Love must conquer. The world must one 
day realise this. To that ideal you must cling, 
pathetically but with passion. 

'Love is the conqueror, not hate. The poets 



66T-. 



DAWN ON ROOF HILL 21 

havQ always known this. Verhaeren knew it. 
Rupert Brooke knew it. Almost his last mes- 
sage to the world was an assertion of the potency 
of Love against which all else, even what you 
call death, is powerless. 

"Now is the hour for poets, for all artists. 
They should sing, paint, carve the praise of Love 
the Conqueror. They should strive to bring men 
back to sanity through art. But no art is great 
unless it is inspired by Love. That is the whole 
secret of life. There is no other mystery. I 
now am love. Friend, I pursue you with it. 
Henceforth I am an agent for the eternal Prin- 
ciple — ^Love. When me you fly I am the wings. 
I am with you always — if you will but seek 
me, know me, and so understand." 

The clouds on the horizon began to fall away. 
The moon was sinking, and there were wisps of 
mist about her. That was the fifth phase. 

Again there was silence. I was moved to im- 
mortal longings. I was attuned to an extraordi- 
nary response to that voice — silent yet audible. 

I had to speak. "Jimmy," I cried entreat- 
ingly, "stay with me always!" 

Then the voice answered — "This love you 
have for me will fade, this memory will 
fade." 



22 DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

"Never!" I cried. 

"It will fade, dear friend, because it is 
founded upon emotion, not upon understanding. 
You are the victim of the excitement of my loss 
and the hypnotism of the world's sacrifice. A 
little while and you will almost forget me. My 
image will blur. But if Love is really your 
king there will come a time, it may be soon, it 
may be late, when something finer, far j&ner than 
emotion will possess you, and then you will be 
really with me." 

"What is that?" 

"Understanding. When, perhaps years 
hence, perhaps months, perhaps weeks, you lose 
emotion and acquire understanding, I shall be 
always with you, I shall be your Invisible Guide, 
your Master, as here I am the reflection of my 
Guide, my Master. His name is Undying Love. 

"Jimmy," I shouted. 

The moon sailed clear of the mist. She was 
nearing the horizon. That was the sixth phase. 

The trees stood up dark and friendly. All 
the world was under the spell of a deep har- 
mony. Dawn was beginning. The moon 
dipped to the horizon — no stain around her any- 
where. That was the seventh phase. 

He sH * * * * 



DAWN ON ROOF HILL 23 

The night had passed. Dawn was at hand. I 
was relieved. I moved towards the sleepers. 
They stirred. Jimmy's brother in a huddle of 
rugs sat up. He looked odd, distraught. 

"I dreamt," he said, "that Jimmy wasn't 
dead." 

[We walked home without speaking, I know 
not what was in their minds, but as we paced the 
familiar road, I was so sure of Jimmy's presence 
that, once, I put out my hand as if to touch him,^ 



II 

THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 

THAT night I sat alone in our house among 
the pines thinking of Jimmy Carstairs and 
waiting for his letter. 

I looked at some of his pictures, at those 
Atmospheric Effects, pastels heightened with 
water-colour, on paper twenty-four inches wide, 
by twelve inches high, which I had bound into 
a volume — vivid aspects of nature, extraordi- 
narily free, rhythmic, and pure in colour: on 
the back of each he had written a bar of music, 
and a few lines of verse, thus recording his emo- 
tion, and adoration, in three arts. How well I 
remember him saying — "They're one, the three, 
you know: learn something of the technique of 
each, then sing. These are attempts, the tot- 
terings of a child — but wait!" 

When the war broke out he enlisted immedi- 
ately. He, who had always talked so much, 
became quiet. He did not explain why he en- 
listed: he enlisted. Later he sent me a card 
with a drawing of St. George upon it. Under 

24 



THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 25 

the drawing of St. George he wrote: "I have 
taken the oath to the King. All is plain now. 
My conscience is in my country's keeping. I 
have no more doubts, and have ceased to suffer." 

While he was in France he took no leave — at 
least, he never returned to England. I think 
he avoided any distraction from the solemnity of 
his oath; but he wrote me a letter each week. 
Those letters are the narrative of the growth of 
a spiritual life, confronted with, and in spite 
of, ghastly material calamities. His last letter 
reached me a week ago. It ended — "We are 
under orders. I'll write again on the eve of 
our battle, so small but so vital to us. I feel 
quite sure — and safe." Knowing Jimmy I was 
certain that letter "on the eve of our battle" 
would be written, and I was also certain that I 
would receive it. I waited for that letter. It 
was my right, and I was convinced that it would 
reach me. I waited patiently, sure of this mes- 
sage from him. 

Presently one of the Others entered the room, 
and said — "Here's a letter for you. Jimmy's 
brother brought it from the hospital. He found 
it in Jimmy's tunic." 

When I had finished the letter I called the 
Others, and Jimmy's brother. After we had 



26 THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 

read it aloud I placed it in my despatch-case 
among other precious things. Later I labelled 
the envelope "The Ideal," because that same 
night I, by chance, encountered "The Real," 
and the two statements have become linked to- 
gether in memory and affection. This is the 
letter that Jimmy Carstairs wrote to me — ^his 
last. 

"I have been reading Plato lately, and Rous- 
seau, in bits, during snatched moments, often 
from sleep. I have learned to do with quite a 
small amount of sleep, so that I may have the 
more time for living my real life which, for want 
of a better term, I call my spiritual life. My 
body, and all my bodily and mental powers I 
have given to the King, who represents all that 
is meant by England — past, present and future. 
I gave my mind and body willingly and com- 
pletely, when England first needed men — so 
there's an end of that. 

"In the early days I said to you — 'All is plain 
now.' It's plainer than ever to-day, when the 
supreme moment, for which my mind and body 
have been trained, approaches. I'm safe, as 
Rupert Brooke knew, he who went through it 
all, 'Safe when men fall. And if these poor 
limbs die, safest of all,' that is, safe from all 



THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 27 

material shocks, because the real me, the reflec- 
tion of divine love, the vessel of human love, can- 
not be touched. 

"My material life is not my own: it has been 
given wholly and completely. But my spiritual 
life is all mine, wholly and completely mine — 
and God's, wholly and completely God's, be- 
cause I desire it to be so. That to me is abso- 
lutely clear. 

"What do I mean when I use the word 'God'? 
Certainly nothing anthropomorphic: certainly 
not the God of the Old Testament: certainly not 
the God of the Kaiser and his pastors, and hardly 
the God of our British churches. They conceal 
him in the background of their worship, behind 
so many subsidiary figures, that I do not feel him 
near. Mark Wilks, whose chapel I used to 
attend in my youth, was one of the few I have 
known who seemed to understand in his extem- 
pore prayers, the absolute spirituality of God. 

"What do I mean when I use the word 'God'? 
I mean the Principle of Goodness, the all of the 
spiritual world which hides, yet which is so 
very close if we care to seek the door. It opens 
to everyone — to Kings or to curs. That's the 
true democracy, true justice. There's no jus- 
tice in the material world. That has always 



28 THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 

been so plain to me, that it's not worth arguing. 
Man tries to make the material world just — 
that's all. The spiritual world is our real home. 
That was the heart of Christ's teaching. The 
door is always open. In we must go one day, 
from this world or from other worlds, whether 
we want to or not. Ultimately this Principle of 
Goodness must draw everything to itself — Arc- 
turus and Neptune, England and Germany, Syria 
and Surrey, you and me. Gleams of this Love, 
this God, this Principle of Goodness, this ac- 
tive spiritual world are always appearing, and 
the odd thing is that when they appear all 
venerate and admire the apparitions, saint and 
sinner. Catholic and Quaker, soldier and 
civilian. 

"The Principle that wins for a man the V.C. 
is an expression of it as is the Principle that, in 
the Air Service, has restored chivalry; the Prin- 
ciple that makes a mother say to her boy ^Go,' 
and a sweetheart to cry to her lover 'Be gone'; 
the Principle that prompts a man, on a wet night 
in the Borough, to give up his seat to a tired 
woman; the Principle that enables me in the 
horror and shame of this world-war to be un- 
afraid, unvexed, and confident. We have lots 
of names and phrases for this Principle — 



THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 29 

patriotism, 'playing the game,' honour — ^but all 
mean one thing — God. 

"This Principle which rules in the Spiritual 
World 'functions eternally.' To use it, even 
slightly, banishes fear, and makes me do my 
duty as perfectly as I can. I fight, to the full 
power of my mind and body, not to please this 
Principle of Goodness, oh, no, a thousand times 
no! but because I have taken my oath. I have 
made the great sacrifice. It was in the act of 
making it that I functioned with Principle. I 
am an artist. I hate violence. My sacrifice 
was as complete as Jesus Christ's. I did it be- 
cause I felt compelled to help pay for, and to 
participate in, the awful but temporary failure 
of civilisation, which this war is. War, I said 
inwardly, when I took my oath, is horrible, 
essentially wicked, absolutely anti-God, but I 
fight because I am alive at this moment, and I 
want to share in the anxiety and agony of my 
fellows, and because England drew the sword 
for the right, and can gain nothing from the 
conflict. I fight because we must see it through, 
I fight so that future generations may be spared 
a repetition of the awful payment we are mak- 
ing for failure. 

"I said just now that the Principle of Good 



30 THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 

functions continually. Strange things happen 
out here, strange spiritual apparitions emerge 
amid our bloody work. I was knee-deep in a 
trench half full of mud and filth, bits of the dead 
all around, and what do you think a 
machine-gunner said while he was wiping the 
muck from his hands. He looked at the dead, 
some were his pals, and he said 'They're now 
functioning with God.' 

"The words were hardly out of his mouth 
when there happened, what he would call 'a bit 
of a scrap' with the enemy, an episode, the mere 
sight of which in pre-war days would have driven 
me mad. When peace (terms are relative) was 
restored, I expressed surprise at his remark, 
'Oh,' he said, 'that's all right. You'll know what 
I mean, you're a mystic' Am I? Perhaps I 
am. The idea gave me infinite pleasure, to 
think that I am one of that initiate confraternity 
which was old when the Morning Stars shouted 
for joy. N 

"We were detailed for bombing that night. 
Can you realise what bombing means — ^what it 
means to me who in sane days could not even 
put an old diseased dog out of his misery? I 
must have killed several of my fellow-men, and 
on the way back, splashing through the dark, 



THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 31 

I murmured these — what do you call them? — 
aphorisms? 

'Mysticism is the language of the heart.' 
^Symbolism is the language of the eyes.' 
'Allegory is the language of the fancy.' 

"Now, old friend, I approach what I will call 
Reality, by which I mean that this ghastly mate- 
rial world in which I now live is the dream, and 
the spiritual world is the Reality. I will tell you 
the profoundest conviction of my life, the faith 
in which I shall die, which explains the relation, 
or rather the absolute lack of relation, of God to 
this silly war, and to all other evils, great and 
small. 

"I said at the beginning of this letter that I 
had been reading Plato and Rousseau in bits. 
You know what those bits are. They are the ex- 
tracts that in past happy days of reading and 
reflecting I copied into the note-book that I keep 
always with me, extracts on one page, not always 
entirely grasping their full import at the time, 
and my diary on the other side. Last night, pe- 
rusing my note-book by candle-light in our dug- 
out (poor Ashton was lying by my side racked 
with rheumatism, and one finger blown off), I 



32 THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 

came upon this. Suddenly its full meaning 
overwhelmed me. I could have shouted for joy. 
The passage was this, from Plato's Republic, 
Book II — 'As to asserting that God, who is good, 
becomes the author of evil to any, we must do 
battle uncompromisingly for the principle that 
fictions conveying such a doctrine as this shall 
neither be received nor heard in the city . . . 
because such language may not be used without 
irreverence, and is moreover both injurious to 
us and self -contradictory.' 

"The second passage is the opening of Rous- 
seau's Emile, Here it is in all its stark truth- 
fulness — 'God makes all things good ; man med- 
dles with them and they become evil.' 

"Do you grasp the truth that jhese statements, 
in part, if not in whole, imply? It is that God 
has nothing to do with this war, with 'the un- 
speakable agonies of the Somme,' with the sor- 
row and distress, virtually, in every home of the 
civilised (my heart! civilised!) world. This 
colossal evil is entirely man-made, and as man, 
tinctured with fear and greed, made it, he must 
find the cure. No nation is altogether blame- 
less; all are deeply coloured or faintly tinged 
with greed and fear. I would apportion the 
blame for this unspeakable catastrophe thus — 



THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 33 

Germany eighty per cent., Russia fifteen per 
cent., Great Britain five per cent. But for the 
sake of eternal righteousness and common fair- 
ness, let us leave God, the Principle of Good- 
ness, out of it. He, being spirit, is cognisant of 
spiritual things only. Nothing to me in the 
whole catastrophe is so nauseating as the pub- 
lished utterances of the German pastors in their 
attempts to prove that God is a German God, a 
kind of glorified Kaiser, and my heart sinks 
when I read of the efforts of certain of our own 
churches to explain that God has willed this war 
as a schoolmaster wields a cane over a naughty 
schoolboy. If that were so, the sights I have 
seen out here, the sights I see daily, would make 
me resent His overtures, flee from Him, if ever 
in some future state, hardly to be imagined, I 
were summoned to His Presence. 

"Those utterances by Plato and Rousseau con- 
firmed me in a belief that I have long, long 
dimly held, and now see plainly. It is quite 
simple. I will state it in a few words. God is 
not only, not the author of evil. He, being per- 
fection, is ignorant of evil, in the same way as a 
child, innately good, is ignorant of evil. It is 
there, but the child, being pure, being like God, 
evades it because he is unconscious of it. 



34 THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 

Therefore evil has no real existence, the child 
touches it not. Christ, who knew everything, 
knew this, meant this, when he said — 'Of such is 
the Kingdom of Heaven.' Under the light of 
this new knowledge how new a meaning illu- 
mines the old texts such as — 'Blessed are the 
pure in heart for they shall see God.' 

"I am well aware that this knowledge is not 
new, it is probably as old as man — 'God made 
all things good; man meddles with them and 
they become evil.' This was the root-know- 
ledge of Christ's insight into the spiritual world : 
that was the essence of Mrs. Eddy's rediscovery 
of Christ's Christianity — this knowledge that 
God is ignorant of evil, and that man when and 
where he likes can leave evil, harmonise with 
God, and be safe and happy. 

"You will have noticed in this letter several 
references to Christ. He possesses me. More 
and more, every day, the thought of Him fills 
my mind and heart. Yet I was brought up as a 
Unitarian under that real Christian and good 
journalist, P. W. Clay den, and also under the 
written and spoken influence of that seer-saint 
James Martineau. I am a Unitarian and some- 
thing more, for I believe all the miracles. That 
sounds a paradox, but it's quite simple really. 



THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 35 

Everyone, I suppose, admits that there are spirit- 
ual forces working in this world, and that by- 
using them rightly material forces have occa- 
sionally been conquered, indeed, surprising vic- 
tories have sometimes been achieved. I suppose 
most people possess about one per cent, of spirit- 
uality. On rare occasions of initiation they may 
have more. Let us allow that the highest amount 
of spirituality in man, from the beginning of 
his existence on this earth, has never exceeded 
ten per cent. One man must be excluded from 
this assumption. That man was Jesus the 
Christ. I suggest that he possessed ninety per 
cent, of spirituality. With such a comprehen- 
sive knowledge of spiritual laws, that must nec- 
essarily be superior to material laws, as the 
mind of the potter is superior to the clay it 
controls, anything is possible — the so-called mir- 
acles ascending to the final demonstration of vic- 
tory over death. I suppose we can only attain 
to the smallest degree of spirituality through 
effort, stress, and sorrow. 'By the thorn path 
and none other is the Mount of Vision won.' 
That's man's fault again. He's always eating 
the wrong apple, consequently he is always try- 
ing to get the taste out of his mouth and striving 
to restore his palate. Christ, when he was 



36 THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 

fogged, knew that his slight failure was due to 
the ten per cent, of spirituality that he lacked. 
How strange it is that the two acutest, most en- 
quiring and most rationalistic of modem minds 
— George Bernard Shaw, and George Moore — 
have each, in their latest books, devoted the 
maturity of their thought and insight to the sub- 
ject of Christ. Ninety per cent, of spirituality 
— that's the secret of the endless, infinite fascina- 
tion of Christ. 

"And, if you consider it, spiritually, we have 
already won this war. I could prove this by two 
parallel columns of type. In the first column I 
would print brief utterances made during the 
first three months of the war by official, high- 
placed Germans, announcing authoritatively the 
first intentions of Germany in the world-conflict. 
In the second column I would place statements 
by the same officials made during the past three 
months. What a change! What a contrast! 
In the early days their cry was for world-domin- 
ion: now their cry is for the defence of the 
Fatherland. 

"Adieu, dear friend. You have listened to 
me patiently. Will the world never realise that 
Love, not hate, is the motive power — the love 
that moves the sun and stars. So runs my 



THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 37 

dream. . . . Oh, I had a strange, beautiful 
dream last night. I dreamt that I had passed 
out of this hell, and that suddenly everything was 
inexpressibly peaceful, still and lovely. I 
found myself in the green meadow of which 
Plato (I think) speaks, where the spirits of those 
who have tried to follow Principle in their earth- 
life wait, not being yet ready for the presence 
of God. In that green meadow I met him who 
has been to me all, and more, than Virgil was to 
the ancient and medieval schoolmen. I mean, 
of course. Turner. He, in his earth-life, you 
know, almost jeered at Ruskin's suggestion that 
there was much more in his paintings than he 
intended. Turner said — 'I painted,' as the 
wind might say 'I blew,' or a stone that is cast 
into a pond, making endless ripples, might say 
'I was thrown.' But here in this meadow Tur- 
ner understood, and he said to me, 'There was 
much in my earth-work beyond mere painting. 
It came when I was in communication not with 
man, but with light, with the sun, and that was 
all the best of my work, because it was God 
working through me." 

"So runs my dream, but what am I? It is my 
prayer that this letter may stir someone to right- 
thinking about the war, and about Him Who is 



38 THE SOLDIER-ARTIST SPEAKS 

in everything, but not in the evil of it. Adieu, 
dear friend! I'll write to you again — if ever 
I write again." 

****** 

I was re-reading this letter, after the Others 
had left the room, when suddenly there came a 
tap at the window. I glanced towards the blind. 
The rapping was repeated. I walked towards 
the door and cried — "Who is it?" 

[While I waited with my hand on the knob of 
the door I had an inexplicable prescience, not 
only that Jimmy Carstairs was with me at the 
moment, smiling as only he could smile — his 
slow, sweet, comprehensive smile — but also that, 
if I thought aright, and demonstrated, he, my 
Invisible Guide, would remain with me accord- 
ing to my desire.^ 



Ill 

THE SOLDIER-PACKER SPEAKS 

A JOLLY voice answered — "All right, sir." 
Then a man in the dress of a wounded sol- 
dier emerged from the sleet and the darkness, 
and said cheerily, "Sorry, governor, but I've lost 
my way. I want the Hill Hospital." 

I drew him indoors, warmed his damp body, 
and, as the Hill Hospital is three miles across 
country, realised that I must accompany him. 
He was not drunk, but the liquor that he had 
imbibed had dulled his perceptions, and 
enhanced the attraction of a walk through the 
cheerless night. He was quite indifferent to the 
fact that he dripped rain, and that he would be 
punished for exceeding his leave by several 
hours. "Nothing matters so long as I'm back in 
Old England," he trolled as we splashed through 
a puddle in the garden path, — "Egypt was all 
right, but France — Lord ! Lord ! My sec- 
tor in La France was a bit too thick, take it from 
me — a bit too thick. I was inoculated in Egypt, 
I was, six times for six diseases, 'cludin' dysan- 

39 



40 THE SOLDIER-PACKER SPEAKS 

terry, and I never got one of them, straight, I 
didn't. And I drank anyfink — ^water as well. 
Why, we used to drag the dead beasties out of 
the wells with grapplin'-irons. Mind you, I 'ad 
some good times in France. There was a week 
I 'ad in Amiens when I was billetted with a 
wine merchant — a proper gent, he. He was a 
good sort, and his missus called me 'Bon 
Tommy.' They weren't sparin' with the gargle, 
neither! Oh, the wine's all right, but the French 
beer! strike me, I wouldn't water cabbages with 
it." 

Suddenly he turned full face to me. Hitherto 
he had been walking a yard ahead, throwing 
his remarks over his left shoulder. 

"See! That's what I got in France!" 

He bared his arm, and exposed a ghastly 
wound, apparently healed, extending from shoul- 
der to wrist. 

"Jammy sight, ain't it? I got that carrying 
a aerial torpedo to a drain full o' water, what 
we calls a trench, four of us was carrying it, and 
I thought my arm was gone when the shell burst, 
no farther off than that telegraph-pole." 

He ran up the bank to the pole to emphasise 
the distance. As we had still a long way to go 
I suggested that he should husband his strength. 



THE SOLDIER-PACKER SPEAKS 41 

"You'll over-tire yourself," I said. By way of 
reply he executed what I presume was a clog- 
dance on the slippery summit of the bank. 
"Tired? I don't get tired walking about Eng- 
land. When you get tired is when you carry 
ammunition up to the Front, four hundred of us 
carrying it for fourteen days. That's when you 
get tired, governor — and proud too. But d' you 
know what I'm proudest of all the time I was in 
France? We was in a captured trench, and we 
'ad to get out of it, and over it, quick, and it was 
full of German dead and dying, and I didn't walk 
on one of their faces — no, not one. That's what 
I'm proudest of. Oh, a soldier's life ain't a bad 
life. . . . What? What? Does I want to go 
back?" 

I had_ asked him that foolish question. My 
excuse is that I was numbed with cold, and stupid 
through lack of sleep. Wisdom was frozen out 
of me. 

He sat down, literally sat down, upon the wet 
road, rocking with laughter. Then he turned 
over on his side and roared again. I picked 
him up. Again he exploded with laughter — 
" 'Op it, mate, or I shall die of laughin' ! 
What! Go back?" 

Suddenly he became serious. He clutched 



42 THE SOLDIER-PACKER SPEAKS 

my arm. "It's mur-r-der, it's mur-r-der, I tell 
you; that's what it is: but it's got to be gone 
through, and it's my job, and we've got to crush 
the 'Uns, so as our kids may 'ave a decent life. 
The job's got to be done, and it ain't cricket to 
do it bad, and I do it as well as I can, same as 
I packed the parcels in the shop. But it ain't 
war — it's mur-r-der, and when I see the shell 
comin' that got me in the arm, I was tickled to 
death, that I was, tickled to death to think that I 
was going to get killed and be out of it." 

"But I wasn't killed, as you see. I dunno 
why I wasn't. I lay there for seven mortal 
hours, and while I was on the ground groaning 
some of our chaps came up, and then they 
couldn't go on, and they couldn't go back, 'cause 
of the barrage. Some of 'em was R.C.'s, and 
there was a priest among 'em. My! he was a 
good 'un, and while they was there they said 
what they call Mass — ^we calls it receivin' the 
Holy Communion — at least them do as does it. 
Funny sight, I promise you, to see them all 
a-praying there, and yet, I dunno, it seemed all 
right, and while they was prayin' I said a sort 
of prayer. I said — '0 God, I'm a bad 'un and 
you're a good 'un, so make me good, and spare 
my life for Jesus Christ, His sake. Amen.' 



THE SOLDIER.PACKER SPEAKS 43 

"Then they all went to sleep, those that weren't 
dead or on sentry-go, and I thought of the old 
mother, and one of the R.C. chaps woke up, and 
I asked him what this Mass business really 
meant, and he told me, and I guess that there 
are worse things than that for a soldier. I said 
so to 'im, and he said — 'You're only a bit right, 
old sport, because it's the only thing when you're 
living in a 'ell upon earth!' And then he told 
me of poetry that someone had written, how at 
Agincourt the soldiers hadn't got any bread and 
wine so they used a blade of grass. Funny! 
Yet I dunno. I expect He up there understood 
and took it in the right way. 

"Oh, this is my 'orspital, is it? I don't think 
I'll go in. I likes walking about England, it's 
just restin'." He passed the hospital gates and 
wandered up the lane, and as he went I heard 
him declaiming to the patient trees — "Want 
to go back. Lord love me, want to go back! 
But it's got to be done, and I guess God '11 look 
after those who do it well. Blade o' grass! 
Funny sort of euchre-euchre-eucharist — yet I 
dun-no — " 

^ Hi >i: H< H: H: 

Is there so much difference between these pre- 
sentments of the Ideal and the Real, between the 



44 THE SOLDIER-PACKER SPEAKS 

Soldier- Artist and the Soldier-Packer? Is there 
so much difference between Rousseau's "God 
makes all things good; man meddles with them 
and they become evil," and Katharine Tynan's 

When there is no sacrifice, 
Bread and Wine for thy disguise; 
Come thou in the Spirit then 
As at Agincourt our men 
With desire a blade of grass 
Served as Eucharist and Mass. 

Each implies an Ultimate Good which is waiting 
and willing. 

Is there so much difference between the 
Soldier-Artist and the Soldier-Packer? Each 
has taken his oath: each realises that it was 
taken for the good of those who come after. 
Each has a faith — one a star, the other a candle, 
different in degree, not in kind — that's all. 
"And," I added, "Jimmy's star shines still . . . 
Jimmy!" 

[Then the Invisible Guide answered — ''The 
test of religion is — life. All men have religion, 
but some see its value and cultivate it. I was 
born under a star; the Soldier-Packer under a 
candle. You flicker, and flame, and flicker 
from one to the other. ^'^ 



IV 
THE VETERANS 

IT was some time later. I was growing accus- 
tomed to the presence of my Invisible Guide, 
but I had not mentioned the joy to anybody 5 not 
even to my old friend the Major, who had been 
staying with me. 

His leave was ending. We rose: we had left 
ourselves a margin before catching the train at 
the wayside station. For we wanted the walk 
to be leisurely, the old familiar walk through 
the wood and across the moor — the country way, 
we called it. We had much to say, before part- 
ing. 

And we wished to call for the Major's serv- 
ant at the village inn, known for two hundred 
years as "The Hop Pole," bordering on an or- 
chard, and half hidden in a sand-pit. He was a 
corporal, united to his master by an indissoluble 
bond. They belong to the Expeditionary Force 
that went to France in August, 1914: they are of 
that remnant, that little group of heroes, scat- 

45 



46 THE VETERANS 

tered, but eternally united. How proud I am to 
be the friend of these veterans. 

The Major stretched his long limbs. "We 
must be going," he said briskly. "Hulloa, 
where's your Harpignies?" He referred to a 
small watercolour by the great French land- 
scape-painter, who was the last survivor of the 
famous school of artists known as "The Men of 
1830." It is my prize possession, and it used to 
hang above my desk. 

He struck a match. "Why " he began. 

His eyes glistened. 

In its place now hangs a picture, or a symbol, 
of one of "The Men of 1914." It is called 
"Wipers." The artist is "Snaffle," and it shows 
a Tommy, bare-headed, war-bedraggled, alert, 
erect. There is blood on his bandaged right 
hand, and his gun, resting on his left shoulder, 
carries a German helmet pierced by Tommy's 
bayonet. He is stem and ready for the future: 
he is not chuckling over his victory. In his belt 
where a sword would rest is a trench spade, and 
in the background is the burnt and battered Cloth 
Hall. It is not a picture of an individual sol- 
dier; it is a symbol of the men who saved Ypres 
— and us. 
- "We were all there," said the Major. "Billy, 



THE VETERANS 47 

he's going strong, and Jimmy's brother is, I hope, 
fit 'somewhere in France'; I, well, I'm a doctor, 
so I mustn't be ill; and Jimmy Carstairs, that 
great artist whom Fate made a great soldier — ■ 
Jimmy's gone west." The Major removed his 
cap. "Carstairs," he said quite simply, "is 
'functioning with God.' He taught me that 
phrase. He taught me a lot of things about the 
spiritual world which so many of us, to our great 
hurt, don't explore. They came to him, he 
would say, through the Inner Memory. Poor 
Jimmy — yet, he's more alive to me now than ever 
he was out in France, or before. He made him- 
self efficient in both worlds, the material and the 
spiritual. He was an Al artist, an Al soldier of 
the King, and an Al soldier of Christ. What 
does Shakespeare say — ^he said most things — 
something about somebody who gave his body 
to his country, and his pure soul unto his Captain 
Christ under Whose banner he had fought so 
long. Odd, eh?" 

As we walked down the lane I said, "I didn't 
show you what I had pasted on the back of that 
'Wipers' picture. It was an extract from one of 
your letters written months ago." 

The Major looked curiously at me. He hates 
to appear important. 



48 THE VETERANS 

"What you said was this. You wrote: 'Re- 
member it was at Ypres we saved England. She 
was our Verdun on a smaller scale. Twice 
Ypres barred the way to Calais, and to an ulti- 
mate menace of our coasts.' " 

"That's perfectly true," said the Major, 
gravely. "And one of the chief heroes of Ypres 
was our Billy, who is now playing the fool, and 
I am afraid drinking all he can get, down at the 
'Hop Pole' in the valley. People talk about 
the effect of war on the soldier. Pooh! Ex- 
ternal things don't really affect anybody. All 
change must come from within, from the spirit- 
ual, from the Inner Memory. War intensifies — 
that's all. It made Garstairs more spiritual, and 
more efficient materially, that goes with real 
spirituality; it makes me more philosophical, 
and our Billy — it just makes him more Billyish. 
We three are all what we were; the only differ- 
ence is that we run on top speed, and our engines 
are silent." 

"But," said I, "leaving his wife and children, 
and, the thought of the trenches in a day or two 
will surely affect Billy. He is human, and he 
must feel serious, as we do." 

"Try," said the Major. "When we arrive at 
the 'Hop Pole' you just listen a minute outside 



THE VETERANS 49 

the bar-parlour door. We'll make it a test case. 
Let us judge Billy's change of heart by the first 
remark we hear from his lips." 

We passed the orchard, picked our way 
through the inn garden, and listened. Above 
the babble of talk and laughter we distinctly 
heard Billy's broad mid-Yorkshire voice say, 
"Johnny Walker, and a splash, miss." 

When we entered, he disentangled, with in- 
credible rapidity, his arm from the waist of a 
young woman, and came to the salute with the 
precision of a semaphore. 

As we crossed the moor to the station, Billy 
marching a few spaces behind, and a search- 
light playing about in the tail of the Great Bear, 
I said to the Major: "Explain yourself, old 
friend, about the spiritual world and Captain 
Christ." 

"It's quite simple. Jimmy taught me. The 
spiritual world is the real world, and will ulti- 
mately be victorious, because it's eternal, and 
this fighting folly is temporary. Get even a 
peep into the spiritual world, and you fear noth- 
ing — not even loss. This is what I believe. 
Jimmy taught me. He had about five per cent, 
of spiritual knowledge, so he could do a little. 
Christ had about ninety per cent., so he could do 



50 THE VETERANS 

almost anything; so Christ became Jimmy's Gap- 
tain. 

"See, there's his picture, the one he called 
'Glimmer and Mass' — that old bam of a factory, 
as ugly and menacing as anything can be: but 
isn't the glimmer that comes through the shaded 
windows lovely? Jimmy made a picture of 
that, a mighty fine picture — 'Glimmer and Mass' 
— the mass of the material, the glimmer of the 
spiritual. Oh, Jimmy isn't dead; he can't die. 
He goes with us into the future, and I'm quite 
happy." 

[Walking home two reflections haunted me. 
One was sad, the other glad. One was that 
Jimmy's presence was not as vivid to me as it 
had been: the other was that the Major was still 
being led by our Invisible Guide,] 



I 



TWO TRAINS 

N such a train Jimmy had come home. That 
ardent spirit, that keen brain brought to this 
a wreck. man, man! 

mX^ ^If ^1^ ^tf ^ig ^If 



The month of May! The long, light evenings 
in country lanes and by village-greens ; the lovely 
lavishment of spring, her blossoms and her 
scents. Oh, the peace of it all! Cattle winding 
homeward over a green hill, fields of buttercups 
splashed with bluebells, birds, and the quiet, 
luminous sky — peace — ^yes, the peace that God 
gives to man. His peace, passing understanding. 

One of the Others and I walked towards the 
railway station on our return from a visit: a 
blackbird sang. We picked a May garland 
blossom, twined it with laburnum, and we said, 
of course — "Who would think that the world is 
at war?" And I was thinking — "How Jimmy 
would have loved this spring." 

The train was late. The little station, a toy 
affair, was immersed in deeper peace even than 

51 



52 TWO TRAINS 

the country-side. Gnats floated above the name 
of the station written in flowers upon a green 
bank. The trees were still; there was no sound 
but the cry of a decadent cuckoo, no movement 
but the distant smoke of our train trailing above 
an orchard. It approached leisurely. We gath- 
ered our flowers together and waited, happy, 
grateful for this interlude of intensive peace. 

The station-master, with a dog at his heels, 
strolled from his office. The train approached 
the station. Suddenly I said, "Why, it is not 
going to stop!" 

It did not. Slowly it passed the platform. 
It disappeared. We sat down — overcome. We 
could have cried. We are not iron; we are not 
trained to fortitude. Into the moment of peace 
eternal, horror had cut. And pity — ^which re- 
mained. Who has not learned in these days 
that "Pity, as an emotion, passes; pity, as a mo- 
tive, remains"? 

It was a new train, brilliantly smart, bril- 
liantly lighted, and on the sides was painted the 
Red Cross, betokening maimed bodies and 
trained healers. Man's crimson sign affronted 
the serenity of Nature. As the train went slowly 
past we saw all — the ashen wounded, many in 
their uniforms, lying so still, one stretcher above 



TWO TRAINS 53 

another, with a little space between. The heads 
of some were swathed, the eyes of some were 
fixed on their England, and at the end of this 
train of suffering was the shining operating-thea- 
tre, and in it were figures bending over some- 
thing. 

The station-master saw this twentieth century- 
invention through, and made a note in his pocket- 
book. "Your train will be twenty-five minutes 
late," he said. "Owing to — that?" I murmured. 
He nodded. "We've had four ambulance trains 
through in the last two hours. Some of 'em was 
fighting this morning." 

"And can you stand this continuous tragedy?" 
I asked. The tragedy, I soon learnt, was oblit- 
erated in the duties of his job. By way of reply 
to my question, he told me all that this little sta- 
tion, widi its name picked out in flowers upon the 
green bank, was doing in the great war. It had 
suffered wild changes, and each change found it 
ready for any emergency. I could not remem- 
ber, even if I was allowed to repeat them, all 
the statistics and transit schemes about which 
he told me ; but I realised that he was happy be- 
cause he was busy. Each minute its duty — ^that 
is happiness. It was his business to get the 
wounded safely past his station on the way to 



54 TWO TRAINS 

London, and to get us away too, which he did 
when, at last, our late, misfit train arrived. 

But the poetry had gone from the evening. 
Our flowers looked faded. Through the spring 
twilight that flaring, crimson train with its cargo 
of broken youth had passed, and the serenity of 
spring was stained by the madness of man. I 
brooded as we passed through the warm, col- 
oured end of day, catching scents of herb and 
flower, and slowly, slowly the peace of Nature 
(ever faithful) again asserted itself, and I be- 
came almost glad knowing that man, the broken 
and the whole, has a City of Refuge, against 
which no earthly assaults can prevail. But the 
pass-word to that city is not "I brood." The 
pass-word is "I work." That the station-master 
knew. He does not ask, "Why, God, why?" 
His question is, "What's the next job?" 

So I was sane again and serene when the train 
reached the terminus — the dark station, but 
cheerfully active. The ambulance train had 
come and gone; but all through the night the 
great station is open and seething with life — 
happy life when the leave trains come in, quieter 
but still happy life when the morning leave train 
goes out. I saw war-gains there — the busy, 
smiling women in their floating white caps and 



TWO TRAINS 55 

blue dresses, modern ministering angels; the 
military police, bland men who mother boys — 
and there were the soldier-boys themselves, who 
had already begmi to foregather, ready for the 
departure of the leave train at 7:50 the following 
morning. They are well looked after through 
the night. England sees to that. 

An hour passes. The numbers increase. 
They are a race apart, these bronzed, smiling 
boys, civilians turned into soldiers, carrying 
their wardrobes on their backs, "going out" gaily 
("nothing clean about them but their guns and 
their eyes," said one who had watched them 
coming out of the trenches). They are con- 
secrated. "They shall not grow old, as we that 
are left grow old." They are eternally young 
like the spring, and like the spring they are 
happy because they are doing, carrying on. 

I wait. I watch them. I will not be sad. I 
say with the poet: 

Let me live on! I only ask to live 

Until the war be ended, and I see 

What is the Verdict that the Heavens give 

To Wrong and Fraud and Force and Treachery. 

Let me live on, if only to see our Soldier Boys 
come home garlanded — peace with honour. 



56 TWO TRAINS 

Let me live on, learning to blot out the past with 
its losses and laments; learning to live acutely 
and actively in the present, and for the future 
to meet it indifferently — with prescience and 
with prayer. Let me live on to find "my dear 
England greater than she knew," because she 
fought fairly for a cause, not for conquest. 

So I blot out the memory of that Red Cross 
train. To brood is useless ; but each morning at 
7.50, when the leave train starts, can we not all, 
wherever we are, quietly, joyfully, with uplifted 
hearts, send to it our invisible thoughts, and our 
wordless prayers? Soldiers, your leave train, 
going out at 7.50 each radiant morning, does not 
go alone from England. 

[Said the Invisible Guide — ''All religion and 
philosophy is in three words, 'God is Love,' To 
that a man of our time added a postscript — 'Only 
the Infinite Pity is sufficient for the Infinite 
Pathos of human life' "] 



VI 
THE STRANGER 

1 AWOKE early that lovely summer morning, 
woke to a consciousness, without effort, that 
Jimmy was with me. From the book-case be- 
hind the bed I picked a little bound copy of the 
Epistle to the Romans that he had given to me. 
Opening it I read "Now the God of patience and 
consolation grant you to be likeminded one to- 
ward another according to Christ Jesus," 

2|^ ^^ ^^ ?l^ ^[^ ^^ 

One of my visitors that summer day was a 
wounded soldier from the Ypres salient, the 
other was a flying-man who had fallen three hun- 
dred feet. He is still lame, but mending. 

We purposed spending the afternoon in Mar- 
ion's garden (she is a mother to all soldiers and 
sailors), and I wanted to show them some won- 
derful gradations of blues — ranging from deep 
delphinium, through anchusa to pale catmint. 
But the hill was steep. So we rested. Some 
kind soul has placed benches on the ascent: 

painted on the back of each is a small red cross. 

67 



58 THE STRANGER 

We gazed down into the valley, swooning in heat, 
and in the midst stood the square grey church 
tower flying a militant flag. "I like to see that," 
said the soldier. 

These men were pious. Once a sneering 
term, that word has now been restored to its 
proper place. It means that through the awful 
chambers of transitory things they had held to 
spiritual truths and kept the key. Being pious, 
they nursed "the unconquerable hope." And 
they had learnt, easier to the simple-minded than 
to the complex, the new-old discovery evolved, 
among many others, by Silvanus Thompson — 
that spiritual truths are to be apprehended by 
spiritual processes only. 

We stared at that grey old church tower with 
the militant flag, and talked of symbolism and 
creeds, and of the aid they are to many; but 
we had learnt that real help can neither be seen, 
nor touched, nor expressed. We agreed that 
you cannot symbolise the spirit, any more than 
you can paint the wind. Man can but express 
what the spirit does, and note where the wind 
blows. We talked. They were unafraid of re- 
citing spiritual adventures. It is a mistake to 
suppose that wounded soldiers are interested 
only in the frolic of "Razzle Dazzle" or the fun 



THE STRANGER 59 

of the "Bing Boys." My friends belonged to 
the new religion, although by profession one is a 
High Churchman, the other a Quaker. (Mon- 
signor Benson, we are told, loved, outside his 
own communion. High Churchmen best, and next 
to them Quakers.) What is the new religion? 
Let me quote M. Pierre Decourcelle: "A new 
religion has sprung up for us, the churches of 
which are underground. The priests of this new 
religion are dressed in khaki or in blue, and 
there is not a sceptic nor an atheist among them. 
We all have a blind, passionate faith in our 
eternal, luminous and unconquered France. . . ." 
That is a Frenchman speaking. Change the 
word France into God, and the Englishman 
speaks. What's in a name? Each has a lum- 
inous and unconquered Faith. Each knows, 
each man in khaki or in blue knows, that he is 
fighting, and if necessary dying, for something 
unseen, but everlasting; that this something is 
good, that it has been active through the ages, 
and that it beats at the heart of the world. But 
the message of the ages seemed to us, just then, 
rather muddled. 

Then the Stranger appeared. He paused in 
our midst. Somehow neither the Soldier nor 
the Flying Man, nor myself were shy in his un- 



60 THE STRANGER 

solicited presence. He was what the Italians 
call simpatica; he seemed to understand. "He's 
like an old friend," the Flying Man whispered 
to me. And, as the Stranger talked, the message 
of the ages was no longer muddled. It was 
plain. He seemed to distil all our doubts down 
to a simple essence. And that essence was 
serenity. 

Suddenly the sorry world cut in upon us. We 
watched the boy creeping up the hill. He was in 
blue. "Marine Gunner," said the Soldier, and 
he cried aloud, "Here, mate, come and rest." 
The boy sat down. He stared vacantly at the 
quiet sky. He seemed dazed. 

"Have a cigarette?" said the Flying Man, 
offering his silver case. "I'll take a Wood- 
bine," answered the Marine Gunner, slowly. 
"You've got something on your chest," said the 
Soldier. "Out with it, mate." "I was in the 
big sea fight," said the Marine Gunner. Then 
he paused. "It was a Great Victory," he 
shouted. "My ship sank three Germans. My 
battery fired the first angry shot. But it was a 
Great Victory. We wondered why there wasn't 
flags when we came home." 

He stared at the grassy hill, the Woodbine, 
unlighted, between his fingers. "I became 



THE STRANGER 61 

stretcher-bearer," he added. "I helped to carry 
my pals below. Our ship had a bad list, and 
there was water up to our knees, and blood and 
bits everywhere. I see the Queen Mary sink, 
and a Zepp go down where she foundered. Now 
I've finished talking about it. I just want to 
look at country things and be quiet. See that 
blackbird. His colour's lamp-black. There 
ain't no glisten on his plumage. It's fine. 
But . . . I'm kind of dazed. It was 'ell, but it 
was a great victory, I tell you. All my pals 
gone." 

He looked at us like an animal at bay, and in 
his eyes there was moisture that might have 
become tears. The Soldier tried to comfort 
him, but failed. "It's shock you've got," he 
said. 

The Stranger moved closer to the Marine Gun- 
ner. 

Then with a wonderful subtlety of apprehen- 
sion, the Flying Man said: "Let's search for 
honeysuckle. It's about time for it now." We 
strolled away, leaving the Stranger and the Ma- 
rine Gunner alone. When we returned, after an 
interval of ten minutes, the boy was changed. 
He was comforted. His eyes had quite lost their 
hunted look. He smiled, and prepared to stride 



62 THE STRANGER 

down the hill. "My leave's up to-night," he 
remarked, cheerily. 

"Now," I said, "we'll proceed to Marion's gar- 
den, have tea, and look at those blue flowers." 
It was odd, but I did not think it necessary to 
explain the invitation to the Stranger. We 
strolled together across the common, and al- 
though I have a perfect visual memory of that 
walk, and although I remember the purport of 
the words that were spoken, I am unable to re- 
peat them. One thing I do remember, because 
the lines were familiar to me. As we turned 
into the lane between two conifers, the Stranger 
was saying: "As one of your poets has written: 

"I press God's lamp close to my breast; its splendour, 
soon or late, 
Will pierce the gloom." 

What we each felt profoundly, for each of the 
men told me privately afterwards, was the sense 
the Stranger gave us of the tremendous import- 
ance of the effort of the humble individual to- 
wards goodness. He made us feel that only in 
that way could peace and love ever rule the 
world; that if each man and woman, without 
fuss, without fear, purged of self, without hope 
of reward, was doing God's work, then such in- 



THE STRANGER 63 

dividuals, gradually growing in number and in- 
fluence, would raise to the level of the individual 
— the home, the village, the town, the city, the 
State, the nations, the wide world. We, if we 
be lifted up ; we, if we demonstrate silently, but 
frankly, the eternal superiority of spiritual over 
physical force, will draw all men unto us. And 
as the Stranger discoursed the message of the 
ages became plain. 

We reached the garden gate. But the 
Stranger did not enter. He bade us good-bye 
in silence, and passed on down the lane. We 
looked long at the blue flowers — the delphinium, 
the anchusa, and the catmint. I broke the si- 
lence. I could not help it. "Well, what are 
you thinking about?" I asked. The Soldier 
looked at the Flying Man. There was wisdom in 
his glance, and he said . . . Yes, he said just 
what I expected him to say. He said : "Did not 
our heart bum within us, while he talked with us 
by the way?" 

[The Invisible Guide smiled — his old, slow 
understanding smile, I said aloud: 

"Yes! Sometimes on the instant all seems plain, 
The simple sun could tell it, or the rain." 



VII 
THE SCULPTOR'S VISION 

WHENEVER I hear of, or talk to, a 
Soldier- Artist I think of Jimmy. Who 
can tell the agonies that convert the Artist into a 
Fighter? Learning to destroy is hard when you 
have been all your life learning to create. 

Ht * Hi * * Hs 

The sculptor had lost his right hand in France; 
he had also been gassed, the result being that his 
lungs are behaving oddly. Bandaged, sore, and 
sullen, he sat upon the seashore at Margate — 
recuperating. 

The day was one of those still, sunny morn- 
ings when life seems a gift and the future a near 
delight. But the sculptor would not invite joy. 
He tossed the morning paper aside. "It's a 
pretty grim world," he growled, "and what will 
my work say to this?" indicating his handless 
arm. With his left hand he began, sadly yet 
viciously, to model the damp sand into a small 
torso. 

"You'll find compensations," I interposed 

65 



66 THE SCULPTOR'S VISION 

feebly, "and, who knows, your joy (it works in 
circles, you know), may, at this moment, be re- 
turning to you. Here are your letters, and a 
book I've just received from America. Now I'm 
going to send off a telegram." 

I went about my business, did it, and then 
strolled into a certain place, long known but 
never visited before. There I had a surprising 
and delightful experience. Joy returned to me 
on a rush of wings. I spent an hour of so of 
supreme pleasure; I saw the vision splendid, 
and this miracle happened at "The Hall by the 
Sea" at Margate. 

I returned to the sculptor brimming with the 
desire to share my enthusiasm ; but, to my aston- 
ishment, he also was inviting joy. His eyes 
shone, and he hailed me with the words: "I 
say, that's a bully book you left with me, a real 
human book, short but packed with encourage- 
ment and hope. It's quite bucked me up, re- 
stored my pluck. I must get a copy of 'Why We 
Love Lincoln,' by James Creelman. Now I un- 
derstand all about Lincoln, and why John Hay 
could write thus of him: 'As, in spite of some 
rudeness. Republicanism is the sole hope of a 
sick world, so Lincoln, with all his foibles, is 
the greatest character since Christ.' What a say- 



THE SCULPTOR'S VISION 67 

ing! It formulates at once the Ideal Statesman. 
That Lincoln was. Why does America love Lin- 
coln? Creelman answers that. It is, he says, 
because 'in the secret recesses where every brave 
man communes with the highest, bravest and 
most unselfish elements of his own nature, the 
average American is an Abraham Lincoln.' 
That's true — we needs must love the highest when 
we see it. And the strange thing is that this 
uncouth man who saved his country; this farm 
lad, six foot and four inches before he was 
seventeen, who made his first speech in flax and 
tow-linen pantaloons, and who said: 'If elected 
I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the 
same'; this national hero, dead but ever-present 
— I've seen him." 

"Seen him? What do you mean?" 
"Ah, that's the mystery of art. I've seen the 
spirit of him, the unconquerable spirit, and the 
goodness of him, rooted and grounded in love, 
that's why his people still love him; I've seen him 
clad in that badly-made frock-coat, and those 
baggy black trousers, with that lion head and the 
eyes of a seer-saint, humorous, yet so sad — I've 
seen him." "Please be explicit," I remarked. 

"It was when I was last in America, just be- 
fore the war, and this book brings it all in a 



68 THE SCULPTOR'S VISION 

rush back to me. I had sought out the work of 
Augustus Saint Gaudens, a great sculptor, who 
dipped classicism in a bath of springtime, and 
gave it a shining garment, new, yet old. He and 
Donatello can meet as friends across the centu- 
ries. I had seen Saint Gaudens' Sherman, and 
his Shaw, and his Farragut and his Adams 
monument, and that lovely low-relief tablet to 
Whistler at West Point, ornamented with a laurel 
wreath, and the butterfly, and on either side two 
flaming Greek torches; and between them the 
Master's own immortal words — 'The story of the 
beautiful is already complete, hewn in the mar- 
bles of the Parthenon, and broidered with the 
birds upon the fan of Hokusai.' Yet I was ill 
content until I had gone to Chicago to see 
Saint Gaudens' Lincoln. That was a great mo- 
ment. I saw the real, ideal Lincoln, standing, 
addressing an audience, the uncouth body vivi- 
fied by the spirit. It's a miracle, and the sculp- 
tor has surrounded the low pedestal upon which 
Lincoln stands (Stanford White helped in that) 
with a circular stone exedra, sixty feet across, 
suggesting the idea of an audience-chamber. 
It's a spirit Lincoln addressing a spirit audience. 
So you see (he smiled) I have seen Lincoln — 
the ideal statesman, of the people, for the peo- 



THE SCULPTOR'S VISION 69 

pie, God's ambassador, who cannot die — Saint 
Gaudens' masterpiece, and this book has brought 
it all back to me, and the war and my wound are 
forgotten, and art outlasts all violence, and my 
joy is returning to me." 

Here I intervened : "And I have seen the ideal 
type of soldier, St, George, by Donatello, a cast, 
but more impressive, more beautiful than the 
original in Florence, because Time and Wind 
and Weather, those master-craftsmen, have 
worked upon it, and given it an air of spiritual 
reality, softening and revealing, hiding and 
suggesting, denied to the human hand." 

"Where?" 

"In 'The Hall by the Sea,' in the garden be- 
tween the dancing hall and the menagerie. 
Come!" 

We crossed the road and entered "The Hall 
by the Sea," surely the last place in the world 
where one would expect an aesthetic experience, 
moving and memorable. We passed through the 
mirrored dancing hall and into the garden. 
There, facing us, against a background of arch- 
ing trees (against young trees Lincoln's statue 
also stands), was Donatello's 5^. George, wan 
and worn by weather, yet doubly beautiful, the 
ideal type of soldier, the least looked-at thing 



70 THE SCULPTOR'S VISION 

in Margate, and the most beautiful and won- 
derful. 

The sculptor gave a little gasp of happiness. 
I left him there, and wandered round the gar- 
den to look at the other classical statues that some 
unknown benefactor has deposited there. Over 
them all has passed the hand of those master- 
craftsmen — Time and Wind and Weather — ^but 
they could not move me like the 5^ George, be- 
cause the St. George was made by Donatello. 

When I returned to my friend he did not hear 
me approach. He was seated on a bench in 
front of the St, George seeing a vision of the un- 
alterable, ever-new message of art. He was out 
of the body. He was anchored to eternal things. 
All this sorry world had slipped him by, and he 
was a citizen of that ancient and present City 
of God, peopled by spiritual activities, which 
enter us when we dwell upon such eternal ideas 
as St, George and Abraham Lincoln made mani- 
fest to you and me by Donatello and Saint Gau- 
dens. 

Joy had circled back to my friend. And it 
all happened, not in Florence and the Victoria 
and Albert Museum; it happened at Margate and 
Chicago. 



THE SCULPTOR'S VISION 71 

[''Art remains" said the Invisible Guide, 
''Art is eternal if the artist is content with the joy 
of the working."} 



VIII 
THE AUSTRALIAN COMES HOME 

IN August I went north. Once I took that jour- 
ney with Jimmy. He read "The Lure of the 
Honey Bee" all the way, quite neglecting the 
scenery. I expostulated; he answered: "My 
mind can only assimilate one fine thing at a 
time." 

When the long Scots express drew up at Rugby 
station, the five Australian soldiers tumbled out 
upon the platform. They had discarded their 
tunics ; they were hot and very happy ; they eyed 
the tea-wagon longingly. One of them cried: 
"There's no time, boys." Another remarked: 
"What a splendid station! I could mop up a 
bucket of that tea." Here I intervened, address- 
ing him whose hair was cropped closest, a giant, 
tingling with virility. "You can take the cups 
with you into the carriage, and drink at your 
leisure." His forehead puckered, revolving the 

proposal. He made a half -step to the tea-wagon, 

72 



THE AUSTRALIAN COMES HOME 73 

paused, smiled. "Thanks! No! I'm used to 
doing without things." The whistle sounded. 
We scrambled back into our compartments. 

The sun blazed. The afternoon grew hotter. 
At Crewe the Australians succumbed to the tea- 
wagon. I watched the close-cropped soldier 
drink three cups of tea and eat four buns. 
Later, much later, in the open country just over 
the Border, the train slowed and gradually be- 
came stationary. We waited in sunlight and 
composure. After the lapse of five minutes I 
looked from the window, observed a group 
around the engine and the guard running back 
along the line in the direction we had come. At 
the same time I noticed the five Australians drop- 
ping from their carriage, and heard them shout 
(such lungs), asking if they could be of help. 
No! The coupling of the front carriage had 
broken. It would mean an hour's delay — ^that 
was all. 

I descended from my carriage and joined the 
soldiers. They were picking bluebells, the 
veritable bluebells of Scotland, and the close- 
cropped giant was scaling a little hill crowned 
with purple heather. He returned with an arm- 
ful, and throwing himself panting upon the bank, 
cried gleefully, "My word! This is the trip of 



74 THE AUSTRALIAN COMES HOME 

our life. The bonny purple heather, the bonny 
purple heather. We've heard Harry Lauder 
sing it on the gramophone, haven't we, 
boys?" 

"Ay," they cried, and the level sun glowed on 
their happy faces and on auld Scotland. 

The engine, now uncoupled, was shunting the 
front carriage half a mile ahead, so we talked 
at ease. "It's fine that none of you have lost 
your Scot's accent," I said. "What," they 
shouted in unison, "we got a Scot's accent! 
Hurrah for the old countrie." They sprang to 
their feet and danced among the bluebells, while 
the sun dipped, and the after-glow transfigured 
Australia and Scotland. 

"Where are you bound for?" I asked. 

"We're going Home," said the close-cropped 
giant. 

And the end of evening was vocal with the 
chorus of the song they sang, which is called 
"Australia Will be There." Laughing heads 
emerged from the carriages, handkerchiefs were 
waved. There were cheers, the engine whistled, 
and the guard, hurrying up, cried, "Now, you 
boys, time's up — bundle in." 

I invited them into my carriage, and explained 
that I had nothing to offer but cool barley-water 



THE AUSTRALIAN COMES HOME 75 

in a Thermos flask, and some fairly good cigars. 
They were all bom in Australia; at the call to 
arms they had been in humble positions in civil 
life; not one of them had ever crossed the sea 
before. Their acquaintance with England was 
limited to Salisbury Plain and a quarter of an 
hour of London that morning. Now they were 
on ten days' leave and — going home. 

No child that I have ever known has asked so 
many questions as they about the country we 
passed through. "Mon, but it's bonny," one 
whispered aloud; and as the train rushed on I 
state that their Scot's accent grew stronger and 
broader. 

The close-cropped giant sat next to me, and 
when the blinds were drawn, under the Defence 
of the Realm Act, he became communicative and 
friendly, as strangers will with strangers under 
such conditions. He withdrew from his tunic a 
thick pocketbook, showed me photographs of his 
home-people, bits of bunting that had flown in 
Australia, a dried flower or two, and pages of 
names and addresses in a clerkly, trembling 
handwriting. 

"Dad wrote them out," he said. "They're 
relations and old friends of the family. I shan't 
have time to see them all. But there's one thing 



76 THE AUSTRALIAN COMES HOME 

I must do, I want awfully to do. I promised 
Dad." 

The train was approaching Edinburgh. 
These Australian soldiers, who were going to 
homes they had never seen^ far scattered, were 
making themselves spruce, and bidding each 
other melodramatic temporary good-byes. I 
had a private word with the close-cropped sol- 
dier. He interested me; there was something 
permanent behind his great gladness. "Shall 
we meet again?" I asked. "I'm going through 
to Stirling to-morrow." His face lighted. 
"Why, that's my home, at least about three miles 
from Stirling. I've never been there, but I could 
find my way blindfold past Argyll's Lodging and 
Mar's Work up to the Castle ramparts, and don't 
I just know where to look for the Ladies' Rock, 
and Bannockbum, and the old Bridge, and Cam- 
buskenneth, and the Bruce and Wallace monu- 
ments, and Ben Ledi and the steep sides of Ben 
Lomond. Oh, this is going to be the time of my 
life. But there's something I must do first, much 
more important than anything else." He be- 
came grave. 

"When shall you be in Stirling?" I asked. 

He grasped my hand. "I shall be up at the 



THE AUSTRALIAN COMES HOME 77 

Castle at five minutes to seven in the morning — 
that's the old hour, the day after to-morrow." 

The train steamed into Edinburgh. There 
were greetings and shouts. The Scots had come 
home. 

"From the low shieling of the distant island 
Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas, 

But still our hearts are young, our hearts are Highland, 
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides." 

There may be finer sights in the world than 
the view from the ramparts of Stirling Castle — 
"the key of the Highlands." But that's the sight 
for me. Here, in life-giving air, history, ro- 
mance, and the wonder of Nature are fused. 
Here is infinity. And there was my friend, the 
close-cropped Australian soldier, swinging 
towards me through the Douglas Garden. 

His eyes swept round the tremendous land- 
scape, his throat contracted ; the muscles worked 
vigorously. His arm shot out, the brown index 
finger rigid — "There's hame!" he murmured. 

He turned away and ascended the steps of the 
Douglas Room. Reverently he knelt down be- 
fore the communion-table used in the Castle by 
John Knox. 



78 THE AUSTRALIAN COMES HOME 

I walked to the open doorway. 
When he rejoined me he said, "You under- 
stand? I promised Dad." 
I understood. 

[''There was something permanent behind his 
great gladness," murmured The Invisible 
Guide,] 



IX 

THE NIPPER 

IT was a grief to Jimmy's father that neither of 
his sons had entered the Air Service. How 
proud he would have been to call "The Nipper" 
his boy. But he had compensations. Time 
showed that. 

^S 5|^ ^f^ JJv 3^ 3K 

One morning, two years ago, into the still air 
cut the buzz of an aeroplane. Suddenly the 
rhythmic buzz changed into a horrible grating 
whirr. All know what that means. I rushed 
out — to see the aeroplane descending awkwardly 
between the trees. 

It had alighted in an adjoining meadow, and 
after an inglorious charge through a low hedge 
had paused in the comer of a turnip field, with 
no more damage than a punctured tyre and the 
breaking of wire stays. The pilot, who was un- 
hurt, having sent to for a gang of "riggers," 

was now seated under a tree, waiting cheer- 
fully. "Engine trouble," he said laconically, 
"and I got lost in the clouds. Looks like rain." 

79 



80 THE NIPPER 

The repairs were not finished until the next 
afternoon. The village, rather awe-struck, si- 
lently watched the mechanics. But the Nipper 
asked questions. That was my first introduc- 
tion to him. He said he had turned eighteen; 
he looked fifteen. Short and slight, with a 
frank, brown face and watchful eyes, he had a 
square, scientific brow (the Huxley type) and a 
resolute chin. But he was as active and merry 
as a colt in a meadow, except when he was ex- 
amining the aeroplane, and then, anyone could 
see, he was using every particle of brain and in- 
telligence. He asked questions innumerable. 
When at last the airman flew away I suspect he 
was glad to go on account of the pertinacity of 
the Nipper. I walked back with him to his 
father's house, a doctor — an old Territorial, now 
a major in the R.A.M.C., and under orders to 
take his men into training in a certain East Coast 
town. 

"I'm for the Yeomanry," said the Nipper. 
"Dad was always fond of horses." "And you?" 
I asked. The Nipper looked at the sky. "Oh, 
if I had my way, of course I'd join the Flying 
Corps." 

Months passed. I had gone to the East Coast 
town to visit the major, now a colonel, also on the 



THE NIPPER 81 

chance of seeing the Nipper again, who, I had 
learned, was in the neighbourhood. "How is 
he doing?" I asked the colonel. "Trekking 
about in this neighbourhood; should arrive here 
early to-morrow morning. They've taken away 
their horses, and given 'em bicycles. The boy is 
annoyed, but I tell him discipline is discipline, 
and he must stick it even if they given 'em 
broomsticks." "But I suppose you'd let him ex- 
change, say, into the Flying Corps — if he — if he 
expressed the desire?" The colonel shrugged 
his shoulders. "A boy's will is the wind's will, 
and the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts. Fancy me quoting Longfellow! 
He's a good lad and as brave as a lion. But he 
must ask his mother about the Flying Corps." 

My bedroom faced a large detached villa, 
which had been converted into headquarters. 

"If the Yeomanry, who ride cycles instead 

of steeds, enter this town to-morrow morning," 
I said to myself, as I retired, "they will prob- 
ably line up in front of H.Q." That is just what 
happened. At an uncomfortably early hour a 
bugle-call lured me to the window, and I saw 
about a hundred cyclists, a gun attached to each 
frame, and standing at the head of the iron 
steeds, men in shirt-sleeves and shorts. Half- 



82 THE NIPPER 

way down the line I found the Nipper. He 
looked fit, but unhappy. "We've been roaming 
the country for a month," he said. "It's all 
right, but I'm fed up with this," and his toe 
touched his muddy bike. As he spoke there was 
a rhythmic whirr in the air, and overhead 
passed, flying low, a seaplane, and on the lower 
plane, dazzling white, the blue circle with the 
red blob in the centre, of the Allies, flashed like 
an oriflamme. The Nipper gazed at it en- 
tranced. When it had reached the further cliff" 
the great bird, flying so steadily and strong, 
turned and swept past us again towards the 
north. "What a sight!" exclaimed the Nipper. 

The Yeomanry officer gave a word of com- 
mand, the men mounted. "Billets," cried the 
Nipper — "and breakfast." They rode off", but 
I noticed that the Nipper almost collided with 
his neighbour through half -turning in his saddle 
to watch the flight of the seaplane. 

Weeks passed. The next time I heard about 
the Nipper was from his mother. I called upon 
her — well, because the Colonel had gone to Sa- 
lonica, and she was lonely and anxious. She 
was also a little troubled about the Nipper. He 
had informed her in a brusque, badly-spelt letter 



THE NIPPER 83 

(ending, "don't worry, darling Mumsy; I'm all 
right, and as fit as a fiddle") that he had left the 
Yeomanry, and was now an A.M. ("that means 
'Air Mecchanic,' you know, old dear") ; and that 
he was working hard as a rigger ("I wanted to 
studdy the whole game from the beginning, you 
see, and I'm also taking flying lessons, which is 
a heavy extra; so if you could send me a few 
pounds. It all goes to help, you know. I 
consoled her as well as I could, urging that 
Salonica was quite a safe place, and that every 
lad of spirit wanted to be an airman. To which 
she answered — " 'Per ardua ad astrd . . . but 
it's the terror that breaks a mother's heart, and 
triumph only means a fresh oncoming terror, 
until — until the war ends." 

Once again I saw the Nipper; but he did not 
see me. There is a certain secluded place on 
the coast where the seaplanes nest. The hangar 
is concealed from the eyes of the curious by a 
high palisade; but by descending to the end of 
the breakwater one gets a view of the inclined 
plane down which the seaplane glides. Fifteen 
men, sometimes more, clad in ochre overalls, con- 
duct the seaplane to the water, and haul her up 
when she returns. In one of these A.M.'s, or 



84 THE NIPPER 

whatever they are called, I recognised the Nip- 
per. "Good lad," I muttered. "He's seeing 
the whole game through." 

Months passed. Once more I saw the Nip- 
per. I was in a train at Woking Station. Just 
as we moved forward the train from Southamp- 
ton drew in. I caught sight of the Nipper, and 
called him. "Just back from France," he cried. 
"We're carrying on fine." He wore a Flight 
Commander's badge. 

He was just twenty when the Zeppelin affair 
happened. Imagine it. At twenty to be world 
famous, and to have achieved a deed which 
will resound in English history as long as 
history is written; and, best of all, to have 
shown others that such a deed can be done. 
And at twenty! Truly this is the age of youth 
when a young life can come thus gloriously to 
full circle. And on the very day that the Nip- 
per's achievement filled the papers I read a state- 
ment in small print that the Colonel was among 
the missing. 

Again I called upon the Nipper's mother. 
She was sitting alone upon the terrace. After 
we had talked, and she was quieter, I said: 
"Missing does not necessarily mean the worst. 
And think of the boy! How proud you must 



THE NIPPER 85 

be!" "It's very wonderful," she said; "but I 
can only think of him as a little lad in a sailor 
suit, whose hair would never allow itself to be 
parted. Triumph — and now the on-coming tor- 
ture." There was a long, long pause; then she 
smiled, and said slowly, and quite simply, "It 
is not correct to say that God will wipe away all 
tears. He wipes them away this minute, if we 
will but let Him." 

That night I read again of the Nipper's 
triumph. The writers exhausted adjectives, and 
I could find no adequate words to express my 
pride. Then I remembered what a great French 
General said when witnessing a charge of British 
troops. He said all — in fewest words. He 
said to his English comrade: "Splendide! 
magnifique! — what you call not 'alf." 

[/ waited, my mind full of the prowess of the 
boy, waited for the Invisible Guide; but he 
seemed distant. Then he spoke faintly — "/i's 
the mothers that suffer''^ 



X 

THE LITTLE SENTINEL 

AND all the while I was thinking of that night 
when I played sentinel on Roof Hill. 
How the mind roams from mystery to actuality. 

xi^ «i^ ^^ ^1^ ^i^ ^i^ 

^Jv ^^ >J^ *J^ >J* *|^ 

He stood at the pier-head, in a thin drizzle of 
rain, his bright eyes staring out at the grey ocean. 
There was nothing to see but a leaden sky meet- 
ing the misty horizon, choppy waves, and the 
gathering shades of evening ; but he watched and 
peered vigilantly, this sentinel-soldier, and he 
was — ready for anything, trained to instant 
action. Rain-drops glistened on his fixed bayo- 
net, his red left-hand shook with the cold, his 
khaki was of poor quality, his age was hardly 
twenty, his past had been something quite humble 
in shop or workhouse ; but now all was changed. 
His country called, and he had arisen trans- 
formed to the heroic caste. He was initiated, re- 
sponsible. This little sentinel represented the 

Imperial might of the island race. There he 

86 



THE LITTLE SENTINEL 87 

stood at the pier-head, blue with cold, guarding 
England. 

But the little sentinel was not yet quite a cast- 
iron soldier. As I sat in a damp deck-chair 
watching him he conveyed to his mouth some- 
thing that looked very like a brandy-ball, and 
when two homely young women passed him, 
smiling furtively but affably, he said aloud, as 
if addressing himself, "Funny what a lot of 
pretty girls pass here." Then he straightened 
his shoulders, and for a minute looked fierce. 
And the grey sea grew greyer, and the horizon 
mistier, and the few passers-by were too chilled 
to lean over the rail and watch the patient fisher- 
men on the landing-stage beneath. Once a boat 
loomed by, a harmless craft: the hand of the 
little sentinel went quickly to his pocket and 
drew forth a telescope, an unnautical affair, the 
kind of present a fond mother would give her 
boy. He clapped it to his eye, surveyed the 
boat, and with a sigh replaced the instrument. 
"All well," I said. "Seems so," he answered. 
"Chilly here!" "You're right, mate." The con- 
versation languished. I am well aware that one 
should not speak to a sentry, but as he addressed 
his remarks to the open sea, and I mine to my 
boots, we could hardly be charged with con- 



88 THE LITTLE SENTINEL 

versing. By this time the pedestrians had 
ceased to shuffle by, and the loneliness had be- 
come very lonely. "It's quiet here," I said. 
"I could do with a bit of excitement," said the 
little sentinel. "As to excitement," said I, "I've 
just had my fill, and it's left me boiling with 
anger." "You're in luck to be boiling," said 
the little sentinel, smiling as he flicked the rain- 
drops from his bayonet. He withdrew his eyes 
for an instant from the sea, and looked at me 
interrogatively. 

"It was at luncheon to-day, good English 
fare," I began, as if soliloquising, and the little 
sentinel, gazing out to sea, appeared not to be 
listening. "I was beginning to be content and 
complacent when, suddenly, from the next table, 
I heard the hateful tongue. I turned, and there, 
within a yard, were three Germans. One was a 
youth, one an elderly, florid man, and the third 
a fat, vital person in early manhood, who was 
eating in the gobbling, spluttering way that has 
always made a meal with a German so unpleas- 
ant a spectacle. I raged inwardly; his eyes met 
mine ; he dropped his German, and changed into 
what he would call English. He talked freely 
of the war, of our mercantile marine, of our 
prospects in the Balkans, and in moments of 



THE LITTLE SENTINEL 89 

excitement he fell again into his native tongue, as 
did the elder man ; but the youth remained silent. 
I think he was frightened. I listened, having 
no stomach to continue my meal. I cannot 
swear that they said anything derogatory to Eng- 
land. Frankly I hoped they would, for then 

But it seemed incredible that in an English rest- 
aurant, filled with English folk, some in khaki, 
three of the enemy should be sitting guzzling 
and talking their hateful language. A gentle- 
man would, at least, have spoken the tongue of 
the country in which he was a guest. Wine and 
food made the bounder more aggressive. He 
fell more frequently into German, and his criti- 
cisms became more pointed. I rose. I could 
endure his proximity no longer. I had a savage 
hope that he would say something definite. 
I " 

The little sentinel smiled. 

"I left the table and waylaid the head waiter. 
'Do you know,' I said, 'that there are three Ger- 
mans at that table? It's intolerable. It's an 
insult.' 'Very sorry, sir. I didn't notice it. 
We're so busy on a Sunday. Perhaps you would 
like to see the manager.' 

"The pleasant manager was having a pleasant 
meal in his pleasant little den. I explained, and 



90 THE LITTLE SENTINEL 

complained, 'Are you sure it was German they 
were talking?' 'Of course I am. There they 
are at it still; there, at that table. Look, the 
waiter is just serving them with three Welsh 
rabbits. It's shameful that they should be 
allowed to sit down with us and discuss us 
loudly in German. The worst of the lot is the 
fat, vital one eating his Welsh rabbit with his 
knife.' 

"The manager was apologetic; but he sug- 
gested that they might be Swiss, or German- 
Americans. He would make inquiries; he was 
very sorry; but he seemed more sorry that my 
luncheon should have been spoiled than that 
Germans should pollute his establishment with 
their presence. 'Oh! hang my luncheouj' said 
I; 'it's the indignity of sitting in the same room 
with them, and being bombarded with their un- 
forgiveable language.' Angrily I left the place, 
half -inclined to lodge a complaint with the police. 
But I didn't. I came here to cool off. It was 
the thing who talked about the English mer- 
cantile marine, stuifed his Welsh rabbit into his 
mouth with his knife, and spluttered loudly in 
German, that incensed me. However, on re- 
flection " 

"Why didn't you biff him one?" said the 



THE LITTLE SENTINEL 91 

little sentinel, in a clear voice, looking straight 
out to sea. 

The advice of the little sentinel seemed so 
admirable that I thought of nothing else all the 
way home. We, civilians, complain, argue, and 
rage, when the right way, whether the antagonist 
be an enemy or an abuse, is to "biff him one." 
That I am sure the little sentinel will do, quickly, 
effectively, when the occasion comes. He has 
been trained to act, I to reflect. Pooh! Re- 
flection is antiquated nowadays — ^useless. I sit 
in the warm railway carriage, with a cup of tea 
and a piece of buttered toast before me — reflect- 
ing, guarding my health. The little sentinel 
stands at the pier-head wet and cold, his rifle in 
his numbed hand — acting, guarding England. 
Reflection and Action! Would that I were he! 

[Again I waited for the comment of the 
Invisible Guide — waited in vain. Perhaps it 
was because I was still angry at the recollection 
of those Germans,]^ 



XI 

THE NEUTRAL 

JIMMY understood the significance of the ter- 
rible word "Neutral," which means that you 
must be colourless before evil as before good. 
"It's impossible," he once cried with passion. 
Alas, he did not live to see great America find 
it impossible. The Neutral discussed below is 
a Neutral of the days before America came in. 

He has been travelling through enemy lands; 
he is now studying us. 

The wanderings of this mystified Neutral had 
brought him to the garden of a remote English 
village inn on a lovely Sunday evening. We 
sat on a bench, surrounded by flowers, shrubs, 
and the village gadabouts, I endeavoring to 
answer his questions. 

The Neutral is learned in music. He has a 
sensitive ear. Suddenly he writhed, "What can 
it be?" he cried. "What terrible sounds. 
What are they?" 

92 



THE NEUTRAL 93 

I could not answer. I could only suppose that 
aome wandering operatic tenor had taken on the 
burr of the world, and was now charming yokels 
for coppers. Yet it was a good voice, a flexible 
tenor; but, oh the foolishness of his declama- 
tory method. 

"It's iniquitous," said the Neutral. "I must 
see him." We walked towards the bar-par- 
lour entrance, which was wreathed in crimson 
ramblers. Within, standing before the open 
fireplace, was a sailor of vast proportions, with 
a large, hot, rubicund face. He was singing 
"The Bridge," by Longfellow, slowly, with 
extraordinary emphasis, helped by a semaphore 
action of his arms, and enunciating each line, 
melodramatically and gravely, in a lingering 
falsetto. The perspiration rolled from his 
round, bronzed face. A mug of old ale, half- 
finished, stood by his side : he was the picture of 
health and happiness, his arms were like the 
trunks of a tree; but the pathos and resignation 
he infused into the statement that — 

How often, oh, how often, 

I had wished that the ebbing tide 

Would bear me away on its bosom 
O'er the ocean wild and wide 



94 THE NEUTRAL 

was so poignant that a dark little man in the 
blue blouse of a "pit-prop" woodcutter began to 
cry. This Woodcutter was the Sailor's attentive 
listener: he stared open-mouthed, admiringly 
through the entire fifteen verses of "The Bridge," 
at the big sentimentalist. When at the conclu- 
sion, the Sailor, with unparalleled feeling and 
pantomime, invoked the moon, etc., "as the 
symbol of love in heaven, and its wavering image 
here," the dark and passionate Woodcutter 
cheered, and, placing his arm round the Sailor's 
waist (he was only half his height), he conducted 
him to the garden, talking volubly. 

They seated themselves on a bench. The 
Sailor mopped his brow, the Woodcutter talked. 
"Saxon and Celt," I whispered. 

"But I thought your country was at war," said 
the Neutral. "Why isn't that big songster with 
his ship?" 

The Woodcutter overheard the remark. He 
jumped towards us like a squirrel. "Him," he 
shouted, "him's a hero. He was in the big naval 
fight, and he's going to be mentioned in dis- 
patches." Then he enumerated his friend's 
deeds of heroism in the Jutland battle, while 
the Sailor sat placidly mopping his brow, his 
full-moon face one vast smile. 



THE NEUTRAL 95 

The Neutral apologised. "You are, of 
course, too old to fight," he remarked to the 
Woodcutter. "Me, I'm fifty-seven. I'm a 
National Guard." He explained his duties fully, 
with animation. "I've got two sons in the Army. 
I was in the Boer War." He waved a crooked 
finger in the face of the Neutral. "We beat the 
Boers," he said, "and we can beat they." 

A woman approached with a perambulator 
containing two infants. The Sailor withdrew 
the children and dangled them on his huge knee. 
The W^oodcutter proceeded to talk ecstatically to 
a stranger. 

"And both are Britons?" asked the Neutral. 
"Yes, Saxon and Celt." "You are a strange 



race." 



We sat watching the ebb and flow of village 
life in a holiday interval of war-time. Two men 
in khaki, travel-stained, laden with impedimenta, 
entered the garden, smiling, so glad to be near 
home again. It was plain where they had come 
from. As they approached the bar, through 
which the cheerful face of the proprietress was 
visible, they saluted. "'Shun!" shouted one, 
as they brought their heels together. "A piece 
of sticking-plaster, if you please, my dear," cried 
the other. 



96 THE NEUTRAL 

"Have you come from the Front?" asked the 
beaming proprietress. 

"Oh, no, miss. They don't send the nicest 
soldiers to the Front now. Never. It ain't good 
for them." 

The Neutral looked perplexed. "Is that sup- 
posed to be funny?" he asked. "Oh, it's just 
our way," I answered. "You're a freak race," 
said the Neutral. "You spend all your spare 
time trying to make the world believe that you 
are not serious. Who is that man reading over 
there by the swing?" "Royal Flying Corps," I 
answered. "He looks serious," said the Neu- 
tral. "See, he's quite absorbed. I'd give 
something to know what he's reading?" I 
strolled towards the Flying Man, and glanced 
over his shoulder. It was "Three Men in a 
Boat." 

The Neutral was silent as we walked up the 
lane towards my house. "I'll read you some- 
thing this evening," I said, "which may help to 
clear your mind. It's a poem." "Well, I'm 
glad," said the Neutral, "that there's someone 
in England cares for poetry." 

The poem I read to him was "The Puzzler," 
by Rudyard Kipling, very significant, and not 
very well known. 



THE NEUTRAL 97 

The Celt in all his variants from Builth to Ballyhoo, 
His mental processes are plain — one knows what he 

will do, 
And can logically predicate his finish by his start; 
But the English — ah, the English — they are quite a 

race apart. 

Their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and 
raw. 

They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw, 

But the straw that they were tickled with — the chaff 
that they were fed with — 

They convert into a weaver's beam to break their foe- 
man's head with. 

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, 
They arrive at their conclusions — largely inarticulate. 
Being void of self-expression they confide their views 

to none; 
But sometimes in a smoking-room, one learns why 

things were done. 

Yes, sometimes in a smoking-room, through clouds of 
"ers" and "ums," 

Obliquely and by inference illumination comes, 

On some step that they have taken, or some action 
they approve — 

Embellished with the argot of the Upper Fourth Re- 
move. 

In telegraphic sentences, half nodded to their friends, 
They hint a matter's inwardness — and there the matter 
ends. 



98 THE NEUTRAL 

And while the Celt is talking from Valencia to Kirk- 
wall, 

The English — ah, the English! — don't say anything 
at all! 

The Neutral smoked in silence. "The Eng- 
lish are a queer mixture," he said at length. 

"They range from Turner to Landseer," I said, 
"from Keats to Kipling, from William Blake to 
Francis Drake." 

"That's a stiff brew," said the Neutral. 

"Yes, add a pinch of Tom Hood and King 
Arthur, with a dash of Kitchener and a flavour of 
Bill Silkes. Then there are the boys of twenty! 
You know what they are. . . ." 

"I do," said the Neutral. "God bless them. 
They give a head to the brew which makes it 
fit for the gods. The Briton's all right, even 
when he laughs." 

"He laughs," I said, "because he knows in his 
heart, absolutely and finally, that he can't be 
beaten." 

«l^ ^^ y^ ^^ ^if ^l* * 

^x ^^ ^< ^^ ^^ ^^ 

The Neutral gazed fixedly at an evening prim- 
rose offering its pale beauty to the quiet close of 
day; but his thoughts were elsewhere. 

"Why can't the Briton be beaten?" he asked. 

"Because he can't." 



THE NEUTRAL 99 

"The Germans had better give in," said the 
Neutral. 

"Sure," said I. 

[The poem would have pleased Jimmy Car- 
stairs during his earth-life. Even now I felt his 
smile, but it was a thin, momentary smile.^ 



o 



XII 

JOY 

FTEN I wonder what would have been the 
effect upon Jimmy's life and art if he had 
recovered — even if maimed. Would Joy have 
still accompanied him? I think so. 

5^ 5jC ^p 3|i ^^ 5j^ 

One morning a notice was posted in the hotel, 
stating that wounded soldiers were to be enter- 
tained in the dining-room at half -past six, and 
asking if the guests would mind postponing their 
own dinners for an hour. 

We did not mind. 

They arrived in motor-brakes, and soon the 
entrance-hall was filled with the cheery men clad 
in those ill-fitting, blue clothes, with the red ties 
and the trousers, turned up, showing the white 
linings — a uniform that must never be changed. 
It is enshrined in our hearts. 

I sat in a corner watching this gathering of a 
new class of jolly Englishmen with a past, as 
they overflowed into the long corridor, hung with 
pictures of a kind, through which they must 

100 



JOY 101 

pass to the dining-room. The chief picture was 
a fresco by a local artist called The Triumph of 
Right, showing in the centre a bevy of winged 
anaemic females rising uneasily from the earth, 
and on either side groups of robuster females 
clinging to bearded men, chained and all woe- 
begone. Some of the wounded soldiers, who 
were lingering in the corridor, gazed blankly at 
this incredibly stupid fresco. One laughed and 
said, "I'd take one of the wrong 'uns for choice," 
and his companion remarked, "Art ain't for us, 
Alf." Then the gong sounded, and they flocked 
through the corridor into the dining-room, just 
big schoolboys, these gay, unconscious heroes, 
for whom art has as yet no message. That is 
not their fault. 

During the meal, the gramophone, by special 
request, wheezed out "Keep the Home Fires 
Burning," and "Charlie Chaplin," and while 
they roared approval, I sat alone in the dim light, 
so near to life, yet so far from it, and wondered 
if there was not something in art for them, 
something that touched life, their life, some- 
thing far removed from that silly fresco of The 
Triumph of Right; something plain, but real and 
splendid, having a message of hope and joy: 
something in art like Anatole France's definition 



102 JOY 

of a simple style in literature. "A simple 
style," he said, "is like a white light. It is 
complex, but not to outward seeming." 

Complex, but not to outward seeming! 
Would they, I wonder, care for an unpainted pic- 
ture I had dreamed, and saw vividly in that 
dream? The title came first. The Offering, It 
was after a victory : the scene was a little chapel, 
just behind the firing-line, battered and broken 
by shells, seared by fire. Into it had come at 
dawn a group of men fresh from the trenches 
and victory, tattered and wounded, but trium- 
phant, led by their captain. They stand near the 
doorway, with bowed heads, uncertain, but will- 
ing to follow him. He kneels before what is 
left of the altar, and lays in front of it his 
sword. The men salute as their captain makes 
the offering of the Symbol of Victory to Undy- 
ing Love. The silence is like a white light. 

While I mused, dreaming this dream again, 
those boys in the dining-room were singing, "But 
me and my true love will never meet again, on 
the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond." 
But they sang it with such gusto, joy in life and 
in the present moment, that the pathetic words 
became a song of triumph, and the "never meet 
again" a reunion of all lovers. Grief fled before 



JOY 103 

their shining gladness. They sang, and to my 
tired heart came the thought — "What if the 
Gospel of Joy with which the wise are already 
trying to rejuvenate the world (Christ glorified, 
not crucified), what if this Gospel of Joy should 
receive its great impetus from our wounded 
soldiers? How strange if that should be the 
happy message of the maimed to grey Eng- 
land. 

And while they thumped the tables and pro- 
ceeded to sing other sad songs as if they were 
pantomime choruses, my memory recurred to 
another fresco that had momentarily caught the 
attention, in my presence, of another group of 
wounded soldiers. That was the Orphans 
fresco, by Cayley Robinson, placed at the close 
of last year in the Middlesex Hospital, one of a 
series of decorations illustrating Acts of Mercy. 
I had seen it when it was shown at the New 
English Art Club, and I had said to myself — 
So Cayley Robinson comes into his kingdom. 
This grave, tender vision of an evening meal 
at some conventual orphanage — the slim, pas- 
sionless sisters, the pale children in their blue 
frocks and white caps and aprons, the bare wall 
alive with subtle shadows, the mystical mingling 
of daylight and lamplight, the cloistral air of it 



104 JOY 

all, the cloistral mind of the artist so faithfully 
expressed — yes, with this he comes into his 
kingdom; it is the final expression of all he has 
dreamed and felt in his life and in his art. And 
I said further to myself — This is very beautiful ; 
it is the only new wall painting I have seen for 
years that gives me complete satisfaction. 

Later, a little while ago, when it was placed in 
the new entrance hall of the Middlesex Hospi- 
tal, I saw it again. And as I sat there, so content 
with its peace and simplicity, glad to sit for half 
an hour looking at it, husbanding the spiritual 
thoughts that it evoked, I noticed (it was visit- 
ing day) that of the relatives and friends of the 
patients — such a huddle of tired, dulled, anxious 
folk — not one of them looked at the fresco. 
They sat stolid, or wandered aimlessly about, 
but none of them gazed at or spoke of the 
Orphans fresco. Suddenly I understood. This 
is a picture in sad colours of a sad scene. It is 
too near their lives to interest or lift them. 
What they want in a wall painting is change. 
They want Joy. And I said to myself — This 
picture is for you, and such as you, who get a 
quiet kind of joy out of sadness, who can rejoice 
in a Botticelli and be happy in the vision of a 
Mantegna. But art is not for the weary, They 



JOY 105 

need joy. Where is the artist who will express 
joy, even in fresco painting? 

It was a "Private Soldier at the Front" who 
wrote : 

I am not sad; only I long for lustre; 
[ am tired of greys and browns and the leafless ash. 
I would have hours that move like a glitter of dancers, 
Far from the angry guns that boom and flash. 

Who will give him when he comes home the 
"blithe wind" laughing on the hills in a world 
"gay with blossom and fleetness"? For our 
wounded soldiers have brought back to us the 
Gospel of Joy, and the artist must once more go 
through the old purgation of learning anew from 
life, not from his sad inward dreams, but from 
the laughter in life, joy triumphant, of our 
wounded soldiers. Was it prophetical that 
years ago I should have written — "Joy may win- 
now where grief fails"? 

[The voice repeated — "The men salute as 
their captain makes the offering of the symbol 
of Victory to Undying Love," Jimmy was 
near me again.]^ 



XIII 
HORRIBLE! 

JIMMY'S art was love. But art can also 
purge by means of pity and terror. It can 
be a warning : it can be horrible. 

In a copy of the "Egoist" I find this by Mr. 
Havilland: "We are living in the age of the 
machine. Man made the machine in his own 
image. . . . After making the machine in his 
own image he has made his human ideal 
machinomorphic. . . . The machine has retali- 
ated by re-making man in its own image." 

Horrible! 

But art, like literature, has warned, is warn- 
ing us. 

I stood for a long time gazing — entranced, 

disturbed, ruminative — at a picture by C. R. W. 

Nevinson called "Mitrailleuse: an Illustration." 

Rightly is it called an illustration. It is an 

illustration of a terrible implement of warfare — 

the French machine-gun, and the picture is as 

ruthless and implacable as the weapon. You 

106 



HORRIBLE! 107 

peer into a pit in the zone of fire; barbed wire 
stretches across the surface of this machino- 
morphic pit; above is the grey, clear sky of 
France. In the pit are four French soldiers. 
One lies dead. The three living men are con- 
scious of one thing only — the control of their 
death-scattering mitrailleuse. There it lurks, 
rigid and venomous, ready to spit out immense 
destruction. And the gunners? Are they men? 
No! They have become machines. They are 
as rigid and implacable as their terrible gun. 
The machine has retaliated by making man in its 
own image. The ashen, angular faces of the 
French soldiers, the hard grey of their hel- 
mets, their steely grey imiforms, are brothers in 
colour to the grey of the gun and the grey of 
the cartridges that are coiling themselves venom- 
ously into it. The mitrailleuse is rigid: the 
men are rigid. As I see them in this most sig- 
nificant "illustration" they have ceased to be 
men. They are machines, without fears, with- 
out hopes, wound up, ready to strike, prepared 
to the ultimate point of efficiency. The crew 
and the gun are one, equipped for one end, one 
only — destruction. Horrible! 

But let me be quite explicit. I glory in these 
French gunners. I glory in their gun. I salute 



108 HORRIBLE! 

these self-sacrificing automata in the clothes of 
men, for they are giving their all — life, love, 
ideals — for their country, as our men are. And 
had I my will I would send a million mitrail- 
leuses and four million gunners against the 
enemies of mankind who are delaying the prog- 
ress of the race. It is the fate of our soldiers 
to fight, to live, to die for justice, humanity, free- 
dom, and we who watch and wait envy them. 
But that does not change the naked fact that 
civilisation has temporarily failed, and that man, 
who should be walking with God, has become 
one with the evil machine invented by man, here 
pictured, and more affrighting, because so reti- 
cent, than a picture of actual slaughter. 

Horrible ! 

They tell me that this work called "Mitrail- 
leuse" is not art, that it is what the artist calls 
it — an illustration. I don't care. Call it what 
you like ! It is more significant than a thousand 
"accomplished" works of art. 

Art is a bigger thing than mere technique. 
Why do I think so highly of "Mitrailleuse"? 
Because the technique is but a means to an end. 
Because it is a frank statement or criticism of 
life, of our present horrible, not-to-be-evaded 
way of living. Therefore it is a warning. The 



HORRIBLE! 109 

artist went out to France. There he saw reali- 
ties. He felt. Art is feeling plus the subordi- 
nate technique. He saw this mitrailleuse pit; 
he felt profoundly what he saw; he painted it, 
and because his feeling was charged with pas- 
sion, his fancy for cubism became the handmaid, 
not the mistress, and so he produced this cubist 
reality, this concrete example of the machino- 
morphic madness of the world, a picture that 
should be in the national collection, because it 
is a stark criticism of the times — a warning for 
the unborn. 

It is horrible ; but it is truth. If Wisdom con- 
templating mankind is filled with pity and dis- 
dain, who can fathom the depth of the disdain 
of Wisdom contemplating this example of man's 
upward progress? 

I remember another art warning. 

I went to see an exhibition of advanced pic- 
tures. Lingering in the outer gallery, I looked 
through the vista of rooms and saw an erection, 
a scaffold-like thing, stretching upwards to the 
skylight. "That's odd," I said to myself, "to 
select a Press day to clean the top windows." I 
continued examining pictures, but I could not 
dismiss the thing from my mind. Its menace 
was beginning to clutch at me. 



110 HORRIBLE! 

When I reached the end room I discovered 
that the obstruction was not a skylight-cleaning 
apparatus. It was apparently something pro- 
cured from an engineering establishment. The 
lower part, reaching from the floor to above my 
head, was made of iron. It was a strange-look- 
ing, consummately efficient machine. I glanced 
at my catalogue. This colossal item in an art 
exhibition was called "The Rock Drill," by Jacob 
Epstein. 

I sat down. I examined "The Rock Drill," 
that was neither sculpture nor a machine, yet 
something of each, and something more. 
Hunched on the rock drill, towering above it, 
yet part of the machine, and subservient to it, was 
— well, it was once a man, but it had now be- 
come a wiry, human frame, with bulging fore- 
head, all spirituality gone, all the material, 
scientific part of this atrocious human increased 
to the n-th power. The machine held him as 
the Old Man of the Sea held Sinbad. The ma- 
chine had conquered. It had re-made man in 
its own image. 

Horrible ! 

[No murmur came from the voice, I bowed 
my head, because I knew that my Invisible 
Guide, who is Love, cannot be where Horror is,] 



PART II 
HIS GUIDANCE FADES 



JIMMY'S BROTHER IS WOUNDED 

LOOKING back I cannot decide exactly when 
the guidance of Jimmy Carstairs began to 
fade. It was gradual. For many weeks after 
his death the consciousness of his presence was 
strong. He was continually with me. I did 
nothing without, as it were, consulting him; but 
as my health improved, and as I became more 
interested in affairs — my Home Diary of the 
War, the transforming of our garden into an 
Experimental Plot, and the preparation for pub- 
lication of a number of essays I had written 
— the spiritual image of Jimmy Carstairs grew 
fainter. My life was becoming normal again, 
and everyone knows that the perfectly healthy, 
either materially or spiritually, are incurious. 
No doubt Jimmy was right in saying that experi- 
ences founded upon emotion, although seemingly 
profound at the time, fade. And I had not yet 
learnt what he meant by Understanding. 

Then something sad and sudden happened that 
blurred the image of my friend. 

113 



114 JIMMY'S BROTHER IS WOUNDED 

We received the news that Jimmy's Brother 
was severely wounded. A shell had demolished 
the rail-head temporary hospital where he was 
either operating or assisting a senior, I could not 
gather which: two men were saved. One was 
unhurt, and he extricated Jimmy's brother whose 
right leg was shattered. It was amputated at 
Boulogne, and the next news I heard, many 
weeks later, was that he was in Guy's Hospital. 

I hurried to London, and found him in one of 
the corridor cubicles. He looked a wraith, and 
his eyes were as big as watches; but he assured 
me that he was "as fit as a fiddle," and could 
leave in a week. 

That strange man, his father, sat silent by the 
bed. I have not told you about Papa Carstairs, 
who idolised Jimmy, and who is supposed to be 
a genius. He writes lower-depth plays and long 
novels, and he has spent a small fortune (in- 
cluding some of Jimmy's) on a lustre-tile proc- 
ess. But the true bent of his genius is mechan- 
ical. He patented a compass alignment which 
has been successful; also an electric torch that 
lasts longer than a week; but his whole interest 
now is in aeroplanes, and somewhere between 
Mill Hill and Bamet he is supposed to be per- 
forming wonders in aeroplane construction. 



JIMMY'S BROTHER IS WOUNDED 115 

But his health is against him. For some reason 
or other he has lost control of his legs. He 
thinks that the trouble began with a six-feet fall 
that he had from an aeroplane. His legs are 
useless ; he had to be carried in an invalid chair 
from the cab. He says nothing. He gazes at 
his son — silently. 

What shall I do? How shall I serve this 
ill boy? Decision is not difficult. Jimmy's 
brother shall come to my house for his period 
of convalescence. There he will receive atten- 
tion and suitable nursing, which he certainly will 
not find amidst the discomfort of the aeroplane 
works. Papa Carstairs agrees — silently. 

A week later I motored Jimmy's brother to my 
house in Surrey. 

He has now an excellent artificial leg, but he 
complains that it irks him to wear it; he prefers 
to hobble about on crutches. He talks about 
climbing Roof Hill. 

Most of the day he spends lying on the win- 
dow couch while I work at the table, preparing 
my book of essays for the press. One day I 
said to him — "Before you came I had a strange 
feeling that Jimmy was near me, and when I had 
finished an article, I would write down his com- 
ments upon it. His words came to me natur- 



116 JIMMY'S BROTHER IS WOUNDED 

ally, without effort. I seemed to be living in his 
presence, but since you came his influence has 
gone. He has faded from my life." 

"Rot," said Jimmy's brother. "You're over- 
wrought! What you want is young, cheerful 
society, like mine. I'm a bit of a crock, I 
know, but barring the absence of a leg, I'm game 
to be your — your Boswell — no, that isn't it. 
You show me your articles, or read them to me, 
and I'll tell you what / think of the blessed 
things." 

"Well," I said, humouring him, "here's one 
that presages the war, although it was written 
before August, 1914." 

"Carry on," said Jimmy's brother. 



II 

"SOMETHING BROODING" 

1 WAITED for the boat at Parkeston Quay, 
near Harwich. 

The delay was intentional. I arrived at the 
rambling hotel, squeezed between the railway sta- 
tion and the quay, twenty-three hours in ad- 
vance. The reason? Not world-moving; but it 
sufficed. In the Tate Gallery is one of the most 
beautiful and companionable little pictures that 
Constable ever painted, called Harwich: Sea and 
Lighthouse. Indeed, were I given my choice of 
all Constable's works, I should find it difficult 
to choose between Harwich Sea, and Weymouth 
Bay from the Salting collection, now in the Na- 
tional Gallery. Harwich Sea and Weymouth 
Bay! The mere titles suggest a poem. 

So I delayed twenty-three hours at Parkeston 

Quay, purposing to visit the scene of Constable's 

Harwich: Sea and Lighthouse; later to cross the 

harbour to Felixstowe; to see the house where 

Constable lived; and then by steamer up the 

117 



118 "SOMETHING BROODING" 

Orwell to Ipswich to saunter through the lane 
where Gainsborough painted The Market Cart, 
Most of this programme I completed, and yet 
when it was all over, and I was half-way to 
Antwerp in mid North Sea, it was not of Con- 
stable or Gainsborough that I thought and 
dreamed, but of little horses going into exile, 
and of a sorrowful Irish stable boy who accom- 
panied them. As I walked the deck I heard the 
bright creatures neighing, heard their little hoofs 
clanking on the boards, no doubt wondering why 
it was not turf, and why this odd stable rocked 
— poor little steeds! 

The horses whinnied Constable and Gains- 
borough out of mind. Yet never was I less in- 
clined to discuss horses than on the night of my 
arrival at Parkeston Quay, or at breakfast the 
following morning. But the soldier-man, on 
leave or half -pay, I know not which, preferred 
horses to painters. He was staying at the hotel, 
waiting to see somebody off by the boat. We 
sat in the smoking-room until after midnight, in 
adjoining easy chairs, reading old numbers of 
illustrated papers and older guides to pictur- 
esque places on the East Coast. Of course 
we did not speak. We had not been introduced. 
I resented his presence. He resented mine. 



"SOMETHING BROODING" 119 

But at breakfast the following morning, as the 
sun shone and the soldier-man had eaten two 
chops, he broke British reserve and addressed 
his grievance of the moment to my newspaper. 
"It's shameful," he said, "this export of Irish 
horses to the Continent. A hundred were 
shipped two nights ago, and there are a lot more 
going this evening." 

I made the suitable exclamation of sympathy 
with a grievance, and added, "If foreigners can 
pay the price for the horses, why can't we?" 

"It's a mystery," he cried. "Something's 
brooding! A Belgian horse-dealer will give on 
an average one hundred and fifty pounds for an 
animal, and two hundred pounds each for brood 
mares. They leave Harwich at the rate of four 
hundred a week. Something's brooding." 

Presently, having learned the facts, I tired of 
the topic, and essayed to change the conversa- 
tion. "Do you know Constable's little picture 
of Harwich: Sea and Lighthouse? I rather want 
to find the place where he painted it." 

The soldier-man made no sort of reply to my 
question. This did not surprise or annoy me. 
I have often noticed that certain men, if a ques- 
tion does not interest them, are able, without dis- 
courtesy, entirely to ignore it. He merely 



120 "SOMETHING BROODING" 

looked fiercely at me and said, "It's scandalous. 
Four hundred a week." 

A little later he retired to pack his bag, and 
I sauntered out to the railway station to inquire 
about the trains to Harwich town. The soldier- 
man appeared just before the scheduled time. 
He was bound for Felixstowe Ferry to do some- 
thing with a gun, so we travelled part of the way 
together. Again I offered him Constable as a 
topic, tempted him with a fact. "Constable's 
Harwich, with the pearly sky and the opalescent 
water, is the first picture in the first room at the 
Tate Gallery. Number one — in Number One 
Room. You can't miss it." 

He looked curiously at me. "What you were 
saying at breakfast is quite to the point. If the 
Belgians can afford to pay big prices for Irish 
horses, to re-sell them to the Germans, mind you, 
why can't we?" 

As we crossed the harbour I indicated the 
mouth of the Orwell, and said, "Have you been 
to Ipswich? Gainsborough lived there for a 
time after his marriage." "There's some good 
fishing in the Orwell," was his answer. 

We parted at the sea-front at Felixstowe. "By 
the by," I murmured, as he was entering a 
carriage to be driven to the Ferry, "can you 



"SOMETHING BROODING" 121 

direct me to Constable's house?" He shook his 
head, gave a direction to the driver, and mut- 
tered to himself, "I'm strongly inclined to return 
to Parkeston Quay to-night and investigate that 
matter of the horses. It's a scandal. There's 
something brooding." 

Constable's house was easily found. It is 
inhabited, and kept in such a beautiful state 
of repair and new paint that all its character 
has gone. I returned to Felixstowe Quay in time 
for the early afternoon boat to Ipswich. That 
must be a delightful voyage on a fine day, but 
as it began to rain while the steamer was battling 
towards the mouth of the Orwell, and as the 
rain descended with increasing fervour, and as 
the stomi reached a climax as we moored against 
Ipswich Quay, I renounced the pleasure of see- 
ing the lane where Gainsborough painted The 
Market Cart, and returned to Harwich in the 
same sodden steamer. 

As we neared the quay the rain ceased, the 
clouds lifted at the horizon, and out of the pall 
of mist started a rainbow from the dull, purple 
background. It looked like a flaming sword, 
and the reflection of the glory lighted the faces 
of the people waiting on the quay. Among them 
was the soldier-man. 



122 "SOMETHING BROODING" 

We greeted each other. It was a temptation 
to say "I'm now going to find the scene of Con- 
stable's Harwich: Sea and Lighthouse,'^ but I re- 
frained, and contented myself with "What extra* 
ordinary weather!" He seemed almost angry. 
"Do you know about the trains back to Parkes- 
ton Quay?" he asked. "I've been talking to an 
old native, and in my opinion, sir, there's some- 
thing brooding." 

Being a precise man I carried a time-table. 
"Pray keep it," I said, "I'm going to walk back," 
and added, when a decent distance separated us, 
"I'm going to find, if possible, the locality of 
Constable's Harwich: Sea and Lighthouse,^'' 

Whatever his comment was I did not hear it. 
Diving into narrow streets, by marine stores, soon 
I sniffed the sea, came out by the water, and 
there, yes ! on this very spot Constable must have 
lingered to make the sketch for his little picture 
of Harwich: Sea and Lighthouse. The scene 
has hardly changed, although the coarse thumb of 
Improvements has left its imprint. The wooden 
look-out house or lighthouse is here still, now 
converted into a shelter, and if the turf -covered 
downs have been patted into formality, what of 
that? The atmosphere, the light, the large 
cumuli rising into a blue sky are just as clear- 



"SOMETHING BROODING" 123 

eyed, childlike-hearted Constable saw them. 
Well content, I walked on by the sea through 
Dovercourt; then striking inland, swung down 
the hill to the railway station and quay that 
are trying to make Parkeston into a small town. 

The boat was due to start at half -past ten, and 
after dining I reclined on a low chair in my 
room trying to write something about Constable, 
and to explain why, when he was painting the 
salt air and the sea at Harwich and Weymouth, 
such freshness informed his work. Well, 
Homer nodded, and I think I must have dozed, 
for I remember waking up and saying to my- 
self, "You ought to have been dreaming of the 
lap of Constable's waves on the Harwich shore, 
but you have really been listening to the clatter 
of little hoofs on cobble-stones." 

The odd thing was that, wide awake, I heard 
them still. I opened the window and looked 
out. The dream was not a dream. Below I 
saw a string of little horses, hooded and jacketed, 
being cajoled in turn along the gangway into a 
big steamer. I descended and watched them 
restively embarking, keeping away from the sol- 
dier-man, who was talking energetically to an 
official, and edging closer and closer to an Irish 
stable-boy, Irish mud on his leggings, the stains 



124 "SOMETHING BROODING" 

of Irish rain on his coat, who was leaning against 
a trolly looking miserable. I edged towards the 
stable-boy, wondering if he would be indignant 
if I invited him to talk with me over a glass of 
the Irish whisky spirit. And all the while the 
procession of little horses passed on to descend, 
one by one, wonderingly, into the dark hold of 
the steamer. 

Can you doubt that in mid North Sea I was not 
thinking of Constable or Gainsborough, but of 
little horses going into exile. Louder than the 
swish of the v/aves was the clatter of hoofs and 
their affrighted voices. 

[''Something brooding — by Jove, you were 
right there,'" said Jimmy s brother, 

''Did you ever see Constable's 'Harwich: Sea 
and Lighthouse?' " / asked. 

"Something brooding," said Jimmy's brother. 

"Something brooding — by Jove, you were 
right there."] 



Ill 

HOW MARS SOLVED THE PROBLEM 

SOMETIMES Jimmy's brother and I, look- 
ing forward, discuss the washed world after 
the war. He is not a good controversialist. 
Each sentence he utters ends with — "We must 
chuck out that infernal Hohenzollern lot." 
Knowing his sentiments I read him the following 

one mild evening. 

^ ^ iii ^ ^ ^ 

I have seen my friend, the Vegetarian Repub- 
lican, three times since the war began. Our 
meetings have been in Easter week, which he 
always spends in London ; the place a vegetarian 
restaurant, where they sell excellent coffee. 

At Easter 1915 I asked him what he thought 
of the war — if it disturbed his train of thought 
and method of living. "Yes," he answered, 
after a pause; "it is like a continual toothache." 
He looked glum, and I noticed that his high-brow, 
small son was more serious than ever. Never- 
theless the Vegetarian Republican was making 
a hearty meal. 

At Easter 1916 I repeated my question. "I 

125 



126 HOW MARS SOLVED THE PROBLEM 

feel as if I have lost my teeth," he answered. 
"I can't bite anything. All appetite for my 
ordinary avocations has gone, and my official 
duties no longer invigorate me." He was lunch- 
ing feebly off a bun and a glass of milk. 

At Easter 1917 he said: "I have become 
accustomed to the folly of the civilised world. I 
accept the conditions indignantly, but obediently. 
I am convinced that the only hope for the world 
is the abolition of dynasties and ruling castes. 
All must go — minor tyrants as well as major. 
But the examples of Russia and America have 
fortified me. I feel as if I have a complete set 
of new teeth." With that he proceeded to eat 
briskly from a plate of nuts ; then, having sipped 
his coffee, he said: "Yes, ruling castes, major 
and minor, must be abolished. Royal enemy 
cousinship must cease. The people must rule, 
and all governing bodies must be viewed with 
suspicion. That is the only hope for this dis- 
ordered world. What do you think of the war? 

For a second or two I eyed him vacantly, and 
then I decided to recount an experience that bears 
immediately upon the conflict. "Listen," I said, 
"you are a psychic ; you will not be surprised at 
what I am about to tell you" : — 



HOW MARS SOLVED THE PROBLEM 127 

It was the last day of what has been called the 
Victory War Loan; it was early in the morning, 
and I was waiting, with others, at a country rail- 
way station, for the train to take us to London. 
Suddenly I was aware of a curious being stand- 
ing near me. He was a visitor from Mars. 
There could be no doubt about his identity. I 
was not surprised because, after three years of 
civilised warfare, I am incapable of being sur- 
prised at anything. 

The Martian indicated three soldiers carrying 
guns and the paraphernalia of their profession, 
who were evidently returning to the Front after 
a short leave. "A type new to me," he said. 
"Pray, what is their occupation?" 

"Their occupation," I answered, "is to kill 
Germans. We have trained about six million 
men for this purpose." 

The Martian, who is what we call unmoral, 
made a note of this information in his pocket- 
book. 

"And those," he asked, "what are they?" He 
indicated a group of prosperous citizens, rotund 
and fur-coated. 

"Those," I answered^ "are bankers and 
wealthy actuaries. They are travelling to town 
earlier than usual, so that they may have extra 



128 HOW MARS SOLVED THE PROBLEM 

time to invest other people's money in the new 
War Loan." 

The Martian again wrote in his pocket-book. 
"I presume," he said, "to obtain more money to 
kill more Germans?" 

"Precisely." 

"And those dear little children, to each of 
whom one of the wealthy citizens has just given a 
coin. I presume they will not buy sweets with 
the money?" 

*'0h, no. They will place the coins in their 
money-boxes, and, when they have accumulated 
enough, war certificates will be bought for them." 

"To provide additional money to kill more 
Germans?" 

"Yes." 

^i- <J^ ^U ^U «J^ ^y 

Jjt *J^ ^f^ ^^ *^ ^^ 

The Martian made another entry, and then 
closed his note-book. "The present object of 
your country, I gather, is to exterminate Ger- 
mans c 

"Yes, in order that the world may live in 
peace and progress." 

"I quite understand," said the Martian. "We 
had a similar trouble in Mars. But being a 
much older and a much wiser nation than yours 
we adopted saner methods. But we made mis- 



HOW MARS SOLVED THE PROBLEM 129 

takes, too, at the beginning. When a dynastical 
war broke out between the two chief Confederate 
States of Mars it was of course agreed that only- 
men over fifty, and invalids, should fight. Your 
method of killing youth is worse than barbarous ; 
it is silly. But our method, even, did not an- 
swer. An enormous number of invalids and 
elderly politicians died lingering and uncom- 
fortable deaths ; but still the war continued." 

"Why?" 

"Because the rulers of the various States had 
relatives at enemy Courts, and our abundant kill- 
ing of enemy invalids and fire-eating sexagenari- 
ans was rendered nugatory by the treachery of 
enemy aunts, uncles, and cousins — chiefly aunts. 
Therefore we adopted drastic measures. We 
formed a League of Peaceable People, which the 
proletariat of all the warring nations immedi- 
ately joined. One spring night, by arrange- 
ment, we killed all the Rulers and their relatives 
throughout Mars. That helped, but it was not 
enough; so we slew the Lords, the Commons, 
County Councillors, everybody who had any- 
thing to do with governance. It took some time, 
because many of the Rural District Councils 
were situated beyond railways. But in time all 
were killed, down to the junior members of the 



130 HOW MARS SOLVED THE PROBLEM 

remotest Rural District Councils. Then Mars 
had peace — lasting peace. Nobody had the 
least desire to form any kind of a governing 
body, because he knew that if he did so he would 
be immediately slain. Everybody in Mars is 
now law-abiding; by that I mean he just lives 
quietly and contentedly, quite as eager after his 
neighbour's happiness as his own. There are 
no churches, because everybody is religious. 
Theatres are free, and beer is a penny a pint." 

While I was giving this information to the 
Vegetarian Republican, I noticed that he became 
more and more agitated. Ere I had quite 
finished he clapped his wideawake upon his 
head. 

"What is the matter with your father?" I 
whispered to his small, serious son. "Why is 
he upset?" 

The boy answered: "Father is a member of 
the Slibby-on-Solent Rural District Council." 

^i* ^i^ «i» «i^ «i^ «j^ 

'I* >^ i^S *f* *f* ^^ 

''Good,'' said Jimmy's brother, ''Topping!" 



IV 

THE CONSOLER 

IN those days when, to my great sorrow, the 
guidance of Jimmy had faded, I would cast 
about seeking other consolations in this grief- 
stricken world. One evening I picked this arti- 
cle from the pile and read it aloud to Jimmy's 
brother. 

This high meadow, on the right day, and with 
the right Companion, may be the way to Heaven. 
My companion, when he is happy, which is not 
always, for he is not yet sufficiently advanced 
continuously to see reality through the mists of 
unreality, when, I say, he is happy, I glean 
through him glimpses of that invisible kingdom 
of the soul, which is Heaven. But I don't tell 
him. 

Sapling trees marked the confines of this roll- 
ing green space open to the public for ever; 
beyond, on the next hill, always seen, are the 
two places of worship, the mother buildings. A 
lark was singing above, a child was trying to fly 

131 



132 THE CONSOLER 

a kite, and all around, sweeping to the hilly, 
wooded horizons, was infinity. An old man, 
wintry but hale, passed us. He paused, smiled, 
and said twice, "All is well." When he had 
passed on my Companion remarked, "He was 
like Luka." 

"Who is Luka?" I asked. 

"Luka," said my Companion, "is an eternal 
type who recurs and recurs, and who never dies 
because he is bom of the spirit. Through all 
history he emerges at different times, in all coun- 
tries; he is the consoler; he knows. I met him 
last night in the far East-End of London, I saw 
him in a dreadful play of genius by Maxim 
Gorki called 'The Lower Depths,' a wonderful 
play that harrows and uplifts. It uplifts be- 
cause Luka, a pilgrim, a wayfarer, a bird of 
passage, passes through the horrors, and wher- 
ever he goes all is well. I have copied out all 
that Luka says — that haunting passage about the 
Land of Righteousness; his answer to Pepel's 
question — 'Is there a God?' Luka replied in a 
low voice (that is the stage direction), 'If you 
believe it — there is!' And it was Luka who 
said, 'There can't be no good in forgettin' what 
yer loved. Where yer love there's all yer soul,' 
and 'Who wishes — finds . . . who wishes 



THE CONSOLER 133 

strongly — finds!' Bacon was a kind of Luka." 

"Bacon? Do you mean the great Bacon — 
'The Advancement of Learning' chap — the 
'wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind?' " 

"Yes! I don't read him — who does? — but I 
did read Arthur Balfour's speech when he un- 
veiled the statue to Bacon, and when I had read 
a passage half-way down I read no more. I had 
all I wanted. This it was : 'Bacon is never tired 
of telling us that the Kingdom of Nature, like the 
Kingdom of God, can only be entered by those 
who approach it in the spirit of a child.' " 

"I suppose you would say that Bacon had 
gleams of the Truth when his intellect was still, 
and that when all the world has the one mind, 
as reflected by the Luka pilgrims, then the King- 
dom of God will be here." 

"Surely," said my companion. 

The golden afternoon waned to a greater 
beauty. In the distance we saw little husbands, 
carrying little black bags, entering the gates of 
little gardens. A motor-car sped along the dis- 
tant road, and my companion said, "I met a 
Luka last night. He happened to be young, but 
he was a Luka. I was not seeking him. I was 
experimenting in a motor bus route. Often and 
often have I gone westward by No. 25. Yes- 



134 THE CONSOLER 

terday, having a free evening, I took the east- 
ward journey wondering whither it would lead 
me. A strange, new country it was, miles of 
streets and crowds — through Stratford and Rom- 
ford to Ilford. My mind was a jumble of im- 
pressions, but one thing remained distinct. Out- 
side the Stratford Town Hall was a long queue of 
people waiting for the doors to open — for what 
kind of entertainment do you think? To hear a 
Christian Science lecture! There was the pla- 
card on the door in large letters. On the return 
journey from Ilford, when we re-passed the Strat- 
ford Town Hall, I alighted and went up the steps. 
The hall was packed. I could not get in. I sat 
in a chair in the vestibule. Someone came and 
talked to me about loving and giving in a new 
way. I looked at him. I listened. I won- 
dered. He, too, was Luka. 

The sun was now sinking. The folded hours 
were near. 

We rose to go, and, passing down the hill, 
met the old man who was like Luka in the play, 
patiently showing the child, who was petulant 
and tearful, how to make his kite soar. 

"How gentle he is!" I remarked. 

The old man overheard, gave us his quiet 



THE CONSOLER 135 

smile, and said: "It's the knocks I've 'ad; 
they've made me gentle." 

My companion looked strangely at me. "Do 
you know," he whispered, "that Luka uses those 
very words in the play, at the end of the first 
act?" 

["FoM give me the blues/' said Jimmy's 
brother, 'What do you all mean? You make 
me want to rush to my Intensive Culture garden, 
and dig, and sweat. But Jimmy would have un- 
derstood," 

"Yes," I said, ''Jimmy — understands,"] 



JIMMY'S DIARY 

HOW strange it is that we should continually 
be saying to one another — "Jimmy would 
have understood," or "Jimmy understands." 
Because he is gone — irretrievably. That is the 
dominant, and unutterably hopeless fact. Oh, 
how I struggled to recapture the sense of Jimmy's 
nearness. It was impossible. I seemed to have 
grown hard and unconcerned. A dead weight 
of indifference had settled upon me, and my 
mind avoided the spiritual gropings that Jimmy 
valued. They seemed visionary, inopportune, 
in the dread, daily reminders of the war. 

This horrid symptom of war-weariness is not 
uncommon. I believe the explanation is that the 
spirit, after a long stress of intense activity, 
grows fatigued, like the body, and must rest and 
recuperate. Little did I think that our wonder- 
ful Jimmy in his Diary had considered this ebb 
of the spirit, and, being pure of heart, had found 
the simple remedy. 

But in those days I did not know of the rem- 
ise 



JIMMY'S DIARY 137 

edy, and through the long weeks that Jimmy's 
brother sojourned with me, I had no gleam of its 
appealing efficacy. A hallucination of that pe- 
riod was that the war was normal, that it didn't 
matter, that the old days would never return. I 
heard of the death of young friends on the field 
of honour with horrible equanimity as if this 
holocaust of youth, like illness and age, was the 
lot of men. The waste of life, the purposeless- 
ness of it all, the incredible folly of a world war, 
swamped feeling. Every avenue of hope or 
progress seemed to be barred by the surge of the 
war. Nothing came to fulfilment. Victory — 
check; prospects of peace — check; consolation in 
religion — check. 

I attended church often, but remained outside 
of it all. The appeal of the liturgy, the reading 
of the Bible stimulated me as of yore, but I knew 
that it was emotional. It touched my senses, 
never my spirit. Did one need God? Jimmy's 
brother, I observed, could get on quite well with- 
out Him, and without even curiosity as to the sur- 
vival of the individual after death. Yet 
Jimmy's brother fumbled wdth all the externals 
of relief. I took him to church one evening, 
and noticed that he fiercely faced the east dur- 
ing the Creed, and genuflected promptly at the 



138 JIMMY'S DIARY 

name of Jesus. That evening after supper, when 
the Others had been singing "Eternal Father, 
Strong to Save" (a nephew is on a iDestroyer), 
I turned to Jimmy's brother and said — "Do you 
believe in the Eternal Father?" 

He answered briskly — "Of course I do. 
Every decent man does. Why shouldn't I? 
What?" 

But did Jimmy's brother really believe in the 
Eternal Father? I think not. You cannot be- 
lieve in something to which you give not the 
slightest attention. And he told me that the 
phrase "doing God's will," meant as little to 
him as doing the sun or moon's will. When I 
said to him one day that the most helpful line 
of poetry in the language was Dante's "In His 
will is our peace," he answered "Rats!" No, I 
don't think Jimmy's brother believes in the 
Eternal Father. Moreover, again and again he 
has informed me that he is a Fatalist. 

So with the unending agony of the war and 
the cheerful agnosticism of the young Fatalist's 
company, I grew into the condition of believing 
that Jimmy, being dead, had ceased to be. I 
walked up to Roof Hill one evening and tried to 
recapture the emotions of that night when I had 
played sentinel, and Jimmy had spoken to me. 



JIMMY'S DIARY 139 

It was of no avail. I was conscious only of 
emptiness, and something that approached bore- 
dom. The spirit slept. A kind of panic seized 
me, and I thought what a dreadful thing life 
could be if interest in it should depart, if the 
morning never again brought a renewal of hope 
and purpose. I returned home despairfully 
and read through some of the essays that I was 
preparing for the book. Oh, how I envied the 
buoyant mood in which occasionally they were 
written, the sense of irresponsible spiritual 
gaiety. Re-reading them did not give me any 
pleasure. They were pre-war. That put them 
out of court. It seemed almost sacrilege to 
be playing with such themes in these dread 
days. 

"Read me something," said Jimmy's brother, 
who had watched me blearing over the articles. 

I began one called "The Open Gate," that, 
at the time of writing, I thought was fine; but 
I soon commenced to skip, and to stammer, 
which I always do when bored. There was 
something in it about an autumn-coloured dog, 
and about Novalis who said "Life is not a 
goal, only a means," and that "Death acceler- 
ates our way to perfection." And at the end was 
the quotation: 



140 JIMMY'S DIARY 

"0 give me, God, the stainless white 
That lines the sea-bird's wing, 
To keep the sooty Thames in sight 
And holy songs to sing." 

When I had finished, Jimmy's brother said — 
"I give you Novalis and the sooty Thames poet. 
What became of the autumn-coloured dog?" 

"He lived three years, and then died of over- 
eating." 

"And Novalis of under-eating. What a 
world!" 

Of course the proper course for me was to 
throw myself into arduous war-work. But the 
state of my health forbade it. I tried some- 
thing, but I was more trouble than service. On 
one occasion I did help Jimmy's brother to plant 
seed-potatoes after he had prepared a ten-rod 
couch-grass allotment, but when I paused for a 
minute to explain to him that planting was a 
Sacrament he threw a spade at me and said — 
"Jawing doesn't get the taters in." Then he 
wiped his brow, screwed up his artificial leg, and 
vigorously attacked the couch-grass. He was 
always happy when he was perspiring violently. 
"One day's digging," he would say, "does me 
more good than a baker's dozen of sacraments. 



JIMMY'S DIARY 141 

Man was made for the soil, not to fiddle round 
with dreams." 

Often I wondered what freak of atavism had 
made him and Jimmy brothers. 

It was on the evening of the day after the 
potato sowing, that the precious packet reached 
me. It came from Jimmy's father, that old, ill 
man; and I believe he meant it as a valedictory 
gift, realising that he was slipping from the 
world, and knowing how I loved his son. 

The packet was Jimmy's Diary, and contained 
his record of thoughts, inquiries, and darts at 
Truth. It was more a commonplace-book than a 
Diary, a means of finding a way toward's a co- 
herent expression of his ultimate beliefs. His 
method was to ask himself a question, and to 
answer it, sometimes fragmentarily. Often an 
answer consisted of a few lines only, but he never 
made an erasure or an alteration. His percep- 
tion of Truth was so clear, his thoughts so candid, 
that he had the power of saying, with a run- 
ning pen, precisely what he purposed saying. 
Towards the end of the book were two essays of 
a more formal character. Indeed, they were 
quite complete, as if he felt able to answer, fully, 
the questions that stood at the head of each. 



142 JIMMY'S DIARY 

Those questions were — I. "Why Should I be 
Good?" 11. "Why Should I Paint Land- 
scapes : 

That was so like Jimmy — to codify his per- 
plexities, dreams, and aspirations into the an- 
swers to two straightfordward questions, quite 
simple, yet surveying the two ardent preposses- 
sions of his life — ethics and art. 

I read the essays with profound interest. I 
agreed entirely, but realised, with sorrow, that 
my interest in them was intellectual. They did 
not bring Jimmy nearer to me. He spoke, but 
it was from the grave. Yet those essays pre- 
pared the way for the continued presence of my 
Invisible Guide. Here they are, printed just as 
Jimmy wrote them. 



VI 

WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 

jimmy's answer 

' * T HAVE always known that the problems of 
X existence are simple if we approach them 
with the candour of a child — that is, with a pure 
heart and an unsullied outlook. This means 
that I must answer the question — "Why Should 
I Be Good?" as if there was nothing else in the 
Universe but myself and that question. If all 
the rest of the world were blotted out, and I 
alone, it would still remain the supreme interro- 
gation. The faith of man, his creeds, symbols 
and thoughts may aid me later to strengthen my 
faith, but nothing can really help me until my 
own consciousness of the spiritual world is so 
fixed that no shock of the material world can 
effect any change. So in answering this ques- 
tion I must look for no help anywhere except 
from God working through myself. 

Here I smile, because the question is so diffi- 
cult, and so simple. I smile because of the 
temptations that assail me to make the answer 

143 



144 WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 

difficult. All theology, all the learned and pious 
people who have been since man first tottered 
under the sun, and wondered, rise up and tempt 
me to flounder in the slough of controversy. 
Whereas God being Spirit — Perfection, Princi- 
ple, Essential Goodness, the Great Architect — is 
above controversy, above words, and above defi- 
nitions. Moreover, and this is supremely im- 
portant. He, being Spirit, can only be approached 
spiritually. If I slit the drum, the sound goes. 
I keep God intact, undefined, unvexed. I can 
only say what He is to me. No man can do 
more. 

I state that God is the Originator, Architect, 
and Eternal Ruler of the spiritual world, which 
is incessantly active, and if we desire it, as near 
to us as the material world. I state that religion, 
pure and undeliled, consists entirely of God, 
that is, of essential goodness and wisdom. Also 
that God desires us to be happy, as He is happy; 
but He cannot force us to be happy because He, 
being Perfection, is not cognisant of unhappi- 
ness. Neither can He prevent us from rebelling 
against Him because He, being Perfection, is not 
cognisant of rebellion. The world is unhappy 
now because it is in a state of rebellion against 
goodness. It is suffering from Sin; it is suf- 



WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 145 

fering because, as congeries of kingdoms, it has 
failed to hit the mark of goodness. Individuals 
do, in increasing numbers. States do not. 
Hence war. Obviously the way of peace is to 
cease to rebel. God cannot stop the war because 
He, being Perfection, is not cognisant of blood- 
shed. 

I am happy although I am fighting, and daily 
seeing sights that should make man slink with 
his face covered for the rest of his days for 
sheer shame of his species ; I am happy because 
my hold on the spiritual life is so strong that no 
vicissitude of the material world can affect it. 
Under the direst conditions I commune with God, 
and derive from that conversation (I prefer the 
word "conversation" to "prayer") a strength, a 
confidence, a serenity that never fails. The 
more I ask, the more I receive. This is a simple 
truth which I prove hourly. No fact of the ma- 
terial world, neither conception nor wireless, has 
ever astonished me so much as the discovery that 
the supply from the spiritual world is inexhausti- 
ble. There is an added joy, which is the best of 
all. I can pass on my God-given strength to such 
of my men, who, not being so far advanced spirit- 
ually, need it. I never talk religion to them. I 
do it. There is no vanity in the process. If 



146 WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 

there were I should have failed. I have out- 
grown self -consciousness. It went when I rea- 
soned that it was inimical to God. It comes to 
this: I, like many others, have found the way to 
this brimming fountain of spiritual strength — 
that's all. So I influence by merely being on 
God's side. I, if I be lifted up, etc. It was Tol- 
stoy who said — "There is only one way of serv- 
ing mankind, that is, to become better yourself." 
This power of influence, by just being, this 
spiritual law, has a terrible reverse side. The 
laws of the material world, I take it, are imita- 
tions of the laws in the spiritual world. As we 
influence for good in the spiritual world, so we 
influence for ill in the material world. The in- 
nocent receive the good and prosper spiritually, 
the innocent also receive the ill and suff'er mate- 
rially. But as evil cannot enter into the spiritual 
world any more than it can enter into the cogni- 
sance of God, it follows that in the spiritual 
world there exists a justice which nothing can im- 
pair. In the material world, where evils enters, 
always the result of fear, or envy, or covetous- 
ness, there is no justice. This war! The inno- 
cent suff'er intolerably because the evil was un- 
loosed through the greed of one nation, the mem- 
bers of which had been hypnotised, to material 



WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 147 

issues, by their military rulers. We cannot 
escape consequences, cannot avoid material trib- 
ulations arising from the evil thoughts around 
us, although we can do something, when we side 
with God, to protect ourselves from their tyranny. 
But no material tribulations can separate us 
from the love of God, that is, from the repose 
and joy of living, even intermittently, according 
to spiritual laws. 

How did I attain to them? First, it was nec- 
essary to blot out all the past of dogma, creeds, 
and controversies. I wiped the slate. What re- 
mained? God remained. The road towards 
Perfection is not through complexities. There 
is no mystery, no openings for neurosis or emo- 
tion. Just an understanding of God — no more 
than that. 

The way is difficult because we are rebels, 
even the best of us, against Perfection. We de- 
sire, even the best of us, our way, not God's 
way. So the churches have, wisely or unwisely, 
invented disciplinary methods whereby men and 
women can be directed in the way of a return to 
God. They have invented official prayers and 
praises, confession, self-examination, asceticism, 
all bewildering, and spiritually deadening, en- 
cumbered paths, twisty and tangled, on a road 



148 WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 

which should be a journey of joy, a running for- 
ward gaily to the gate of our old, real home. 

No one can help us along the spiritual high- 
way: there is no adventitious aid. I and you, 
through God, are the only architects of our spirit- 
ual edifices. But the building needs continuous 
and concentrated work. Every desire of the 
healthy, material body protests. But the in- 
dividual can progress, if he works simply and 
naturally, scaling the smallest barriers first, and 
using God as a spiritual and engaging Compan- 
ion, not as an Anthropomorphic Deity who de- 
sires praise and penitence. Foolish! Foolish! 
He desires us only to be good and happy, as 
He is. 

The spiritual laws have to be investigated and 
proved with the same fervour and diligence as 
the material laws. If a man would give such 
application to the understanding of the laws of 
God's kingdom as he gives to the acquisition of a 
foreign language, he would be amazed at the re- 
sults. Difficulties of daily life fall away. Ave- 
nues of undreamed enjoyment open. If the 
years that a youth gives to a Call to the Bar were 
given to this quest he would be initiate on the 
threshold of life. A course of theological train- 
ing rarely accomplishes this as the student is 



WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 149 

only learning what other men have thought about 
God's kingdom. They have approached it 
through the intellect; they acquire and discard; 
they flounder in controversy; they strain their 
brains, whereas the only approach to God's king- 
dom is through the heart. 

I admit that there may be many who need the 
discipline of college, convent or theological 
course to open a wicket-gate to the spiritual 
world. I was most fortunate in not needing such 
aids, owing to temperament, and wise up-bring- 
ing. I always enjoyed the religious atmosphere. 
I like attending churches, although I have long 
been well aware that spiritual reality being in 
the heart, cannot be in a building, however con- 
secrated and conforming to the forms, symbols, 
and shibboleths of religion. I am indeed fortu- 
nate in having the religious temperament which 
may be the memory of ante-natal religious ex- 
perience. I remember, when I first joined a 
club and discovered in myself an aptitude for 
billiards which I enjoyed, that a friend, one 
Wednesday evening, invited me to take part in a 
game of snooker pool. 

"Sorry, I can't," I replied. "Fm going to 
church." 

"Wh-a-t? Why go to church on a weekday?" 



150 WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 

"Because I like it better than snooker pool." 

Everything external is an accessory. I go to 
services still, but they are an aid to the recogni- 
tion of spiritual forces only, a sign, like a ribbon 
on the uniform. Everything is accessory except 
the one supreme fact that God is ever present, 
and that he is comrade and captain in one. He 
needs no help because in Himself He embraces 
everything. He is all in all. 

As more and more individuals hold this cer- 
tainty, the kingdom of God, which is knowledge 
of the laws of the spiritual world, will draw near. 
By that way, and by no other, wars will cease, 
with all the abuses that discolour civilisation, for 
no nation can be covetous, and no man can 
oppress his neighbour, when all are on God's 
side. So arises this glorious certainty: the 
world will be saved by its individuals, not by its 
governments. I and you. You and I. We 
can begin this eternal moment. 

The aim of each individual's life should be 
clear — to increase his percentage of spiritual 
knowledge, from the poor one per cent., or so, 
that most of us possess, upwards to the five or ten 
per cent., or more, that spiritual seers have had, 
here and there, since the world began, keeping 
always before us the goal of earthly spiritual 



WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 151 

knowledge — the ninety per cent, that Jesus Christ 
possessed. The fight is hard and long, because 
no progress can be made while self is humoured. 
No one can advance in spiritual knowledge so 
long as he places his own passions before the 
passion for God. No one can be good unless he 
makes good his God. 

Have I answered the question — "Why Should 
I be Good?" In a hundred ways I prove in 
my life, daily, that there is nothing else to be. 

Nothing else gives permanent satisfaction. 

Nothing else supplies a meaning to every hour 
of every day. 

Nothing else could bear me, serenely and with 
hope, through the horrors of this war. 

I must be good because I am unhappy when I 
am not good, and there is no lasting way of being 
good except by living and working on God's side. 

Why God is good I do not know. He is, and 
Christ showed us the height and depth of His 
goodness. 

Why Jesus Christ should have been singled out 
for this honour I do not know any more than I 
know why great musicians, or great poets, are 
what they are. Christ was a Spiritual genius. 
I am content to be guided by Him (but not by 
what theologians have invented about Him) be- 



152 WHY SHOULD I BE GOOD? 

cause He knew more of the secret workings of 
spiritual laws than anyone who has ever lived. 
I follow Him because the great extent of His 
knowledge confirms my gropings towards an un- 
derstanding of God. 

I am good because it is, surpassingly, the best 
thing that this life offers. All other aims bring 
satiety. Being good, and keeping it secret, is 
the only human effort that saves more than it 
spends. 

Be good — and don't tell. That's the motto 
for the New Man. 



VII 

WHY SHOULD I PAINT LANDSCAPES? 

jimmy's answer 

"T 71 THY — anything? But I must know 
V V why. It is my nature. I have no 
peace of mind until I know why. 

As a child I fumbled with drawing trees and 
skies because that interested me more than any- 
thing else in my child's world. It was an in- 
stinct such as a bee has to gather honey. 
Therein I was most fortunate. It was a free 
gift to me, like a faculty for science or song. I 
doubt if more than ten per cent, of children have 
an instinct for any particular vocation. I had 
two, art and ethics, but art was paramount. 
Now ethics stand first, because I am no longer 
young, and because of the war. The two have 
grown, side by side, as I have grown, one help- 
ing, and eventually explaining the other. My 
case is quite normal. Had I been a genius I 
should have been abnormal. I am merely a man 
with some talent of vision and delicate percep- 
tions. Should I survive this war I believe that 

153 



154 WHY SHOULD I PAINT? 

I shall be a better painter because warfare vital- 
ises vision. It does not change; nothing but a 
change of heart changes: it intensifies. I see in 
nature more than I ever saw before — incredibly 
more. Colour, form, structure, design even have 
new meanings for me. If I survive, and can 
persuade my technique to keep pace with my 
vision, I shall become quite a decent landscape 
painter. 

How fortunate I was in being bom with a de- 
sire. To paint landscapes was stronger with me 
than food, drink, friendships, sport, sweethearts, 
and other pleasures. 

My first stage was simple and regular. I 
painted — for love. I studied for love. Love 
of my work shaped me into a young god striding 
through morning freshness. Then came my 
temptation, the serpent in my Garden of Eden, 
which comes to all. It became necessary that 
what I had done for love must be done for a liv- 
ing. The serpent approached. The creature 
was neither scaly nor grovelling. It approached 
with gifts, with comforts, applause and a variety 
of other enjoyments. How did I receive the en- 
gaging creature? That is a question that every 
artist must answer, and, on the answer, depends 
the quality of his art throughout his life. Again 



WHY SHOULD I PAINT? 155 

I was fortunate because, by temperament, I did 
not desire the things that most people desire. 
It was no victory. I simply didn't want them. 
I have wanted so few things. I have never 
in my life had a silk hat, or a bicycle, or a 
starched shirt. I was always a believer in the 
Buddhist Illusion. Most things are Illusion. 
A delicate digestion has debarred me from ex- 
perimenting with costly foods and drinks, and 
until the outbreak of war I lived in a commodi- 
ous bam on a moor. My brother, who is a 
medical student, once summed me up thus — 
"Jimmy," he said, "is, spiritually, hot stuff." 

As I never exhibited pictures, and as since 
my student days I have never visited exhibitions, 
the pangs of competition and jealousy did not 
assail me. Yet I sold my pictures, which were 
always small, and usually such themes as "A 
White Bam Seen Through Apple Blossom," 
"Shades of Green Against a Vast Sky," "Black 
Crows on Spring Grass," "Red Roofs and Tree 
Tops Against Sky," "Fallow Land in Planes of 
Colour." 

I sold my pictures to people who came to the 
bam. The prices gave me no trouble, as I 
merely calculated my expenses for the week and 
added twenty-five per cent. That was my 



156 WHY SHOULD I PAINT? 

method. It never altered. I imagine that I 
am the only living landscape painter who has 
never sold a picture for more than five pounds. 

I take no credit for this way of painting and 
living. It was, for me, the line of least resist- 
ance. But we are so designed that every in- 
dividual has his private, particular and peculiar 
temptations, subtly suited to his temperament. 
Their subtlety is sometimes almost unbelievably 
apt and disguised. It looks like a butterfly: it 
is really a vulture. 

My temptation glided towards me in the guise 
of doubts and fears, which quickly developed 
into depression. For I had begun to ask myself 
why I painted pictures — to what end. You see, 
the first intensity of desire for self-expression, 
which acts and doesn't reason, was leaving me. 
I had to seek a substitute for enthusiasm. Many 
find it in ambition, in competition, in the neces- 
sity of meeting an ever-increasing expenditure. 
Such motives passed me by. I pitted my art 
against nobody's, and if my weekly expenditure 
rose, which was rare, I increased the price of the 
week's picture. There was always a buyer wait- 
ing, as I was fanciful about only allowing, what 
I considered the worthy ones, to leave the bam. 

My temptation, which almost wrecked me, was 



WHY SHOULD I PAINT? 157 

of a different kind, and was neatly adapted to 
test my temperament. It sprang, I think, from 
my interest in ethics. Certainly it was ethical 
in character. Always, deep in my heart, I had 
been aware that mere pleasure and profit in work 
was insufficient. There must be a purpose, 
transcending self, and working towards an object 
which, in human phraseology, may be described 
as — doing God's will. Were my little land- 
scapes doing that? 

That question drove me into inertia. I could 
not work. I could paint no more landscapes 
until I had decided, in some way or another, 
that they were doing God's will, and illuminat- 
ing the road for some of my fellow-creatures. 

I began to despair. That was my subtle temp- 
tation — despair. I lost tone. My fibre loos- 
ened. I no longer rose at sunrise, and when I 
went out I loafed, trying to untangle the knot into 
which my purpose in life had become tied. Why 
should I paint? Why should I do anything? 
Why was I alive? 

My interest in ethics saved me, steered my 
steps to the right road. I awoke. The awaken- 
ing came to me one day in a flash, but analysis 
has since told me that the flash was but the spark 
ignited of my metaphysical preparations. I 



158 WHY SHOULD I PAINT? 

saw in a flash how this command to do God's will 
could be accommodated to my landscape paint- 
ings. My ethical studies, and also my meta- 
physical intuitions had told me that all the evil 
in the world is man-made, that God being Per- 
fection, originator and doer of all truth and 
beauty, knows nothing of the evil that man has 
made, and functions only to bring us back to 
Truth and Beauty, which is happiness. There- 
fore, as the material world is but a reflection of 
the spiritual world, I, in my small way as land- 
scape painter, could try to remind people of 
Eternal Beauty. 

And there was something more which hard- 
ened this idea into a fact. I have always held 
that the legends of the Old Testament are based, 
often clumsily, always romantically, upon 
truths. The Legend of the Fall of Man implies 
a former state of happiness from which he fell 
when he sought his own material ends, in prefer- 
ence to spiritual ends. As I reflected upon this 
there came dimly into my mind the hypothesis 
called Ancestral Memory, and at once my de- 
pression began to disappear. Memory! mem- 
ory! When, in a serene mood, I have been 
alone, painting some sight so beautiful that I 
despaired of interpreting it, I have become aware 



WHY SHOULD I PAINT? 159 

that memory held a still more beautiful vision 
of the scene before me. So one day the full 
answer to the quesiton, "Why Should I Paint 
Landscapes?" was revealed. By so doing I 
could remind my fellow-creatures of the original 
beauty which man inherited, from which he has 
fallen away, to which he must eventually return, 
because the love of God, which is Beauty, as it 
is everything else that is beautiful, wills this 
return. All life is but a wandering to find 
home, and the landscape painter lures the wan- 
derer back by reminding him of the beauty which 
is his birthright. This he can do, even it be in 
the tongue of the nursery: he can re-state the 
imagination of God. 

So I was happy again. I had refound the 
road. My art had a purpose. 

Then happened, what so often happens, when 
a man has found himself, through himself. 
Confirmation of my discovery was given to me. 
In the "Note-Books of Francis Thompson," that 
poet, that seer, I found this illuminating passage : 

'The world — the Universe — is a fallen world. 
When people try to understand the Divine 
plans, they forget that everything is not as 
it was designed to be. And with regard to 
any given thing you have first to discover, if 



160 WHY SHOULD I PAINT? 

you can, how far it is as it was meant to be. 
That should be precisely the function of poetry — 
to see and restore the Divine idea of things, 
freed from the disfiguring accidents of their 
Fall.' 

That, also, should be precisely the function of 
landscape painting — to see and restore the 
Divine idea of things, freed from the disfiguring 
accidents of their Fall. 

So I took up my brushes again, and have never 
since doubted that in painting for Him, not for 
myself, I am doing His Will. In which is 
peace." 



VIII 
JIMMY'S DOUBLE 

THERE were other passages in Jimmy's 
Diary which showed the grip and sweep of 
his intellectual equipment. Indeed, with the 
exception of the essays printed in the last two 
chapters, most of the fragments were intellectual 
exercises. Reading them, I recognised his men- 
tality, but they did not bring his beloved pres- 
ence to me as on that mystical night upon Roof 
Hill. 

How fine was the fragment called "The Bud 
and The Comet," a study of the tiny and the tre- 
mendous which showed a profound knowledge of 
botany and astronomy. He speculated for a 
page on Space, prompted by the rush of Wolf's 
Comet, which is travelling at the rate of nine 
million miles in a week. 

So moved was I with his speculations upon 
Space that I found the room narrow and con- 
fined, and, as I had an appointment in London 
that evening I suddenly determined to tramp 

161 



162 JIMMY'S DOUBLE 

across country for five miles, and pick up the 
London train at the junction. 

In the inn where I rested I met Jimmy's 
Double. I shall always associate him with 
Jimmy, because he, too, was interested in as- 
tronomy, and because ... 

Some were waiting for dinner, some for the 
rain to cease. I strolled towards the porch. It 
was still drizzling. Through the flying clouds 
gleamed patches of stars. I was about to set 
forth on the dreary walk to the station, when 
suddenly, the dim avenue was illuminated from 
the rays of two powerful lamps advancing 
quickly. Hastily I stepped back into the porch, 
and a long, grey motor drew up at the door. 
The driver alighted and rang the bell; a porter 
appeared and tucked a bag into the car; the 
Stranger scrambled to his seat behind the driv- 
ing-wheel, then turning quickly, he regarded me 
keenly and said — "London bound?" "Yes!" 
"I'll give you a lift if you like." 

I accepted with gratitude and took the seat be- 
side him. Why not? I am not worth stealing. 
There was another reason. Something in his 
gesture, in his movement, reminded me of 
Jimmy. It was odd. I glanced at him again. 
"You might be Jimmy's double," I said to my- 



JIMMY'S DOUBLE 163 

self. We swept down and round the avenue at a 
reckless pace, yet he inspired confidence, but I 
wished that he would refrain from throwing back 
his head at intervals to peer, with rapt look, at 
the stars. After one of these fugitive glances at 
immensity he said — "Infinite space is an awe in- 
spiring thought, yet it's consolatory. You can't 
worry when you feel yourself part of the whole 
with the Everlasting Arms beneath. What does 
it all mean? Are the myriads of other worlds 
inhabited? The nearest of the fixed stars is any- 
thing between twenty and thirty billions of 
miles away from us. And that star in the 
Pleiades — I remember the Pleiades from the 
Bible, why, there's a star there, dear me, I 
quite forget the name, the light from which takes 
two hundred years to reach us. It would be fine 
to be an astronomer. Somebody called astron- 
omy re-thinking the thoughts of God. Just 
look at that cluster of stars over there above the 
trees. Aren't you taken off your feet? Can't 
you feel yourself lost, immersed in infinity? 
Look!" 

I did not look, for just then the motor gave an 
ugly swerve, barely escaping a collision with a 
lumbering van. My companion made no com- 
ment. His inclination to astronomy had cer- 



164 JIMMY'S DOUBLE 

tainly given him amazing confidence as a motor- 
ist. 

The rain became heavier. I had no regrets, 
because rain meant opaque clouds and a starless 
sky, which might induce my companion to con- 
centrate his attention on the slippery road. Sud- 
denly there was a hoot behind us. A car tried to 
pass. He laughed, did something to something, 
jerked at something else, and we shot ahead. 
He laughed again — "Do you remember Tenny- 
son's gruff comment after looking through a tele- 
scope at the great nebula in Perseus? — 'One 
doesn't think much of the county families after 
that.' " 

The pattering rain had become a consistent 
downpour. We stopped. He alighted to fix the 
hood above our heads, a wet, messy and tedious 
operation. When all was taut he remained out 
in the rain bare-headed, looking up at the sky. 
"The stars are all gone," he said sadly. "I feel 
friendless." 

When we reached the beginning of the tram- 
way system I made a banal remark about the 
advantage to outlying London of that method of 
transit. He ignored my statement. The mind 
of Jimmy's Double was working on other mat- 
ters. "I read somewhere the other day," he 



JIMMY'S DOUBLE 165 

said, "that all theological students ought to have 
a thorough grounding in astronomy. I agree. 
We're too much concerned with ourselves. 
What we need is broader views, wider horizons. 
We want to be reminded of light, not of gloom. 
Now that Indian poet — what's his name?" 

"Rabindranath Tagore," I suggested. 

"Yes, that's the man. He gives us light, he 
breeds hope, he shows us that the stars are gleam- 
ing even if the clouds hide them. He wrote an 
article somewhere on that wonderful Eastern 
book — I've forgotten the name, I'm bad at 
names, but I remember (he laughed) that the 
last syllable was the name of a fish — shad, 
shads." 

"The Upanishads," I suggested. 

"Yes, that's it — you know everything. In his 
article Tagore quotes a sentence from 'The Up- 
anishads' which has fixed itself in my memory: 
'Man becomes true if in this life he can under- 
stand God; if not, it is the greatest calamity.' 
That simple, profound statement did me more 
good than any amount of novels and plays." 

This strange man continued to talk, opening 
his heart to me as we splashed through the muddy 
streets. The flaring shops, the bedraggled way- 
farers, and the noises of London seemed a dream. 



166 JIMMY'S DOUBLE 

In the Edgware Road, near a fried-fish shop, we 
were held up for five minutes by a fallen horse. 
It was there that he said — oblivious of the sur- 
roundings — "All our difficulties arise because 
most of us have forgotten that the aim of life is 
just to be good, to understand God and to strive 
to be like Him, so simple to the pure in heart, so 
horribly difficult to the others. That Eastern 
book also says, 'When God is truly known all fet- 
ters fall.' We make our own fetters. God, it's 
my belief, knows nothing about our fetters. Be- 
gin to break them, and we begin to understand 
Him. I'm learning." 

I tried to see his face, but the hood covered it. 
I tried again, because I had the strange feeling 
that I was talking to Jimmy. And he, while he 
was talking, was invisible. 

He drove me to my destination, and while I 
was trying to stammer my thanks for his courtesy 
and for his conversation, he said — "Oh! that's 
nothing. I've talked myself into a good mood. 
It's the stars. They always lift me up. They 
make me understand. We'll part now while 
I'm at my best. Remember me so." 

[7 did remember him, and I remember the 
sentence he quoted — "Man becomes true if in 



JIMMY'S DOUBLE 167 

this life he can understand GodJ" I recalled 
what Jimmy had said to me on Roof Hill — 
"When you lose emotion and acquire under- 
standing I shall be always with you. Under- 
standing?'' 

"Why are you so quiet?'' said my host, 
"What's in your mind?" 

''Jimmy," I answered,] 



PART III 
HIS GUIDANCE RETURNS 



THE POSTCARDS OF JIMMY'S BROTHER 

AGAIN I was alone save for the neighbour- 
hood of the Others. They are much to 
me, but as they are not principals in this narra- 
tive, they remain ministering, but tenuous. I 
was alone because Jimmy's brother had gone to 
stay with his father, who is worse after the treat- 
ment prescribed by the sixth specialist he has 
consulted within the past two years. The de- 
parture of Jimmy's brother had been even more 
abrupt than his usual spasdomic movements. 
One day, after a chirpy comment on one of my 
articles, he announced that he had decided to be- 
come an Intensive Culture farmer, on the French, 
Belgian, Danish System (he didn't say which) 
— "That is as soon as I can get a bit of rhino. 
A one-legged man can cart manure all right, and 
he saves in boot-leather. An article of yours 
about tulip-culture put me on the track, and I got 
hot after reading a report of a French-Belgian 
garden near London which raised nine hundred 
poimds an acre by Intensive Culture. That's 

m 



172 POSTCARDS OF JIMMY'S BROTHER 

my game. I'll combine it with doctoring. I'll 
be a shilling country doctor, and a grower of 
appetising vegetables." 

The next day Jimmy's brother went to London, 
and presently I discovered that an old idea of his 
had taken shape. 

He had given me a hint as to its nature when 
he had said — "I know what's the matter with 
Dad. The specialists are all wrong. I know. 
The wounded — God, those wounded, taught me. 
I can cure Dad, you bet! I can diagnose his 
case on my head." 

For a week I heard nothing from him. Then 
one of his staccato postcards arrived. It said — 
"Am visiting all the Intensive Culture Gardens, 
and I'm going to cure Dad. Butler will operate 
on my diagnosis. If I can scrape the money to- 
gether I shall become a pupil in a crack Inten- 
sive Garden. It's good business." 

Later we heard that the operation on his father 
had been very successful, and, to one of the 
Others, Jimmy's brother wrote a few explana- 
tory lines. He used technical terms, but in plain 
language it meant that Papa Carstairs's trouble 
and loss of leg-power had arisen from a tumour 
pressing upon the spine, due, no doubt, prima- 
rily, to his fall from the aeroplane. Jimmy's 



POSTCARDS OF JIMMY'S BROTHER 173 

brother had discovered this through his know- 
ledge of shrapnel splinters in the region of the 
spine, and the many operations at which he had 
assisted in France. He had advised the opera- 
tion upon his father, and had convinced Butler, 
who had performed it "very successfully." 

Three more postcards came from Jimmy's 
brother in the course of the next three months. 
The first said — "Dad has moved his legs." The 
second said- — "Dad has walked round the room." 
The third said — "Dad has given me a thousand 
pounds, so now I can start Intensive Farming 
proper." 

And I, being alone, free from all distracting, 
if pleasant influences, drew nearer to Jimmy 
again. I re-read his letters and Diary. I pon- 
dered on the vital comparison he drew between 
doing "one's best" and doing "the best," that is, 
God's best. I re-read the long letter wherein he 
argued, so sanely and temperately, that man 
must go to school to win success in the spiritual 
world, as he goes to school to win success in the 
material world. Jimmy's brother, I reflected, 
wants to be an intensive farmer, so he works at 
it, gives it his whole mind, becomes a pupil. 
Who elects to be a pupil in the spiritual world? 



174 POSTCARDS OF JIMMY'S BROTHER 

I started on the adventure by resuming an old 
habit, long, alas, abandoned, of devoting a quar- 
ter of an hour each morning — ^no more, no less — 
to simple excursions thither by way of spiritual 
exercises, which I discovered, to my joy, meant a 
closer companionship with Jimmy. The results 
of that quarter of an hour devoted to spiritual 
exercises were surprising. He returned to me. 
I lived with him. That intercourse was the com- 
pletest pleasure I have ever had. 

Those were joyful days. My interest in life 
had returned. I was myself again, because I 
had at last renounced the morphia. In the be- 
ginning the drug was necessary to allay the agony 
that followed the radium treatment after my 
operation. As the pain increased so did the 
injections of morphia, until I was taking ten 
grains each day. When the pain passed I still 
needed the morphia — terribly. Then followed 
a fight of nearly two years. Had it not been 
for the loving care of one who is nearest and 
dearest to me, the victory would never have been 
won. We did not speak of the contest, but I 
hoped that the dose was being decreased. One 
night I said — "I'll take no more. I can do with- 
out it." Whereupon she laughed and said — 



POSTCARDS OF JIMMY'S BROTHER 175 

"You've been taking nothing but water for a 
month." 

I turned to the article that I had written in the 
early days of the morphia, when it was a bless- 
ing, before it had become a curse. I read it 
through with some wonderment. 



II 

MORPHIA 

THE pain had persisted for weeks. 
Sometimes it came in paroxysms; then 
it was merely a dull ache; then another parox- 
ysm ; then brief, blessed relief, when I learnt the 
meaning of the word "blessed." The persist- 
ence of the pain wore me down. I lost perspec- 
tive. I could not reason myself back to joy. 
And yet through it all, not entirely in the blessed 
intervals of relief, I had a glimmer, a dim con- 
sciousness, illogical, not to be explained, that 
often I was happier than I had ever been before. 
Some strange re-birth was stirring, rising in my 
consciousness. But I could not track that sensa- 
tion of beatitude. It came and went, but, like 
the idea of Spring, the promise of the crocus, and 
warm winds, it was there even on the blackest 
days. 

I was encircled by love — the ministrations of 
love, but (oh! this was the sting) love was pow- 
erless to lessen the pain ; yet from out that wintry 

thought rose a blossom, the consolation that a 

176 



MORPHIA 177 

time might come when a sufferer would be sor- 
rier for those "who loved and could not help" 
than for himself. 

Other friends tried to soothe with words: 
One said, "Pain is nothing, the way you take it is 
everything." Another urged: "Pain does not 
exist; it is no attribute of God. He is not con- 
scious of pain and suffering. It is we who 
imagine it and make it real. We are the vic- 
tims of aeons of wrong thinking. By right think- 
ing, and absolute reliance on Him who is too 
pure to behold iniquity, you can think yourself 
out of pain." Another gave me James Hinton's 
"Mystery of Pain," marking this passage, "All 
which we feel as painful is really giving." I 
was told, again, that pain is the complement of 
love, and I remembered, saying it to myself 
often, that profound thought of Thomas a Kem- 
pis: "Suffering is the terrible initiative caress 
of God." And I repeated a passage from 
Keble's "Lectures on Poetry" — so hard, yet so 
right — "No man can in sorrow charge God with 
being unjust or hostile to him so long as he has 
at hand but one blade of grass or one bud upon 
the trees." 

Such tidings toward resignation helped — a 
little. They engaged the mind in exercise. 



178 MORPHIA 

stimulated the mysticism that is latent in us all; 
but the pain continued, in demoniac flux and 
flow. Just when I seemed to have thought my- 
self into quietude and relief, just when I was go- 
ing about my mental work, meandering towards 
happiness, it would lash out again suddenly, any 
time, anywhere, burning and bruising; and all 
else, except that damnable fact of pain, continu- 
ous pain, was a shadow. 

It was worse by night. The dark procession 
of the hours was so broken, so unnatural, that I 
laughed aloud in secret at the irony of applying 
the word repose to those distracted nights. 
For a month I knew no rest. My doctor, emptied 
of self, who brought with him the air of the moor 
and the glint of sunshine, said: "You must 
sleep. That's the first step to curing you. To- 
night I'll give you an injection of morphia, a 
third of a grain. I'll come at a quarter to ten. 
Go to bed early and compose yourself." Then 
he talked of fly-fishing, and in telling him how 
Charles Marriott and I once tried to catch the 
Cornish trout, and that we (that is, he) landed a 
"rainbow" from the Lamoma Stream, I forgot 
the pain. He is a wise doctor. 

I went to bed at half -past nine. The pain was 
worse; aforetime it had sometimes only ambled; 



MORPHIA 179 

but that night it jumped and skipped, shied and 
bohed, and then tugged back into harness. I 
tried to compose myself. I strove to recall Cole- 
ridge's lines: how when he stretched his limbs 
upon his bed he had no fear, only a sense of 
benediction — "Since all around me, everywhere. 
Eternal Love and Wisdom are." But the con- 
solatory message of the poem passed me by. I 
could do nothing but ask myself doggedly the 
one dread question, "How much pain can a man 
bear?" 

In the next house somebody was playing "The 
Blue Danube" valse. I nearly cried, but I think 
that the impulse was towards self-pity, for often 
I had danced, not very well, in the three-step 
days to the "Blue Danube" — ^without pain. 
Imagine it — ^without pain! 

Through the open door I could see, in the ad- 
joining bedroom, bathed in a flush of rose-pink 
light, strangely incongruous, the doctor, sterilis- 
ing the morphia needle. I watched him, sul- 
lenly, without hope, watched the steam from 
the boiling water, watched his alert movements, 
stupidly, without hope, for I had tried so many 
palliatives, and why should the ultimate, this 
poor last, stop the gnawing pain? 

The doctor came briskly into my room, smil- 



180 MORPHIA 

ing, the needle in his raised hand. He bared 
my left arm, pinched up the flesh in the upper 
fleshy part above the elbow joint. I closed my 
eyes. Ajax prayed that he might be killed in 
the light. I am not Ajax. I am a peering mod- 
em, slowly curing myself of posturing. Give 
me darkness for pain, or for that relief, sleep's 
twin-brother, that Walt Whitman called, when he 
was very fit and strong, "delicate death." But 
there was no pain — ^merely a prick. I watched 
him press and soothe the tiny wound with medi- 
cated wool; then my wife tucked me up and 
kissed me, and the doctor said: "Now go to 
sleep. Good night." They turned out the 
lights. 

I will try to tell you just what happened so far 
as I am able. Plotinus, whom Maeterlinck calls 
"the greatest intellect known to me," has left 
it on record that he attained three times in his 
life to ecstatic union with "tlie One." St. Paul, 
in that wonderful twelfth chapter of H Corin- 
thians, "knew a man in Christ above fourteen 
years ago (whether in the body I cannot tell, 
or whether out of the body I cannot tell: God 
knoweth) ; such an one caught up to the third 
heaven." 

I cite those master-seers merely as a reminder 



MORPHIA 181 

of the incalculable, unfathomable things that 
may happen, and have happened, in the ageless 
realm- without-end of the unseen. My little ad- 
venture, in the land where there is no birth and 
no death, was the toddling of a child compared 
with the strides, through ecstasy, of Paul and 
Plotinus; but in all such experiences, great or 
little, it is the burden of the flesh that must first 
be removed, to ease the escape from the un- 
reality of matter to the reality of spirit, by the 
aid of such tremendous divergencies as, for Paul 
and Plotinus, a consciousness of the reality of 
God, and — for me — a little morphia. 

The experiences of that night were wonderful. 
My burden of apprehension fell away, the pain 
ceased, and I was conscious of a feeling of well- 
being, indeed of ecstasy, a clairvoyance so com- 
plete, so informed with substance, yet so unsub- 
stantial that I was sure, even against the evi- 
dence of the morphia (for the prick still pleas- 
antly smarted) that it was bom of the spirit, not 
of the flesh. It happened with incredible quick- 
ness; one moment I was in torment, every con- 
tact of body with the bed-clothes a heavy ache — 
then suddenly I was stretching out my limbs in 
luxury, each exploration of the cool sheets an in- 
creasing joy, each movement of the body a drop- 



182 MORPHIA 

ping into a softer and a more soothing harmony, 
a harmony of the soul as well as of the body. 
In that blissful interval when sleep drew near, 
I was so sure of her kind oncoming that I did 
not hasten her approach. In perfect trust I 
waited for sleep to encompass me, and in that 
blissful interval difficulties, problems that had 
troubled me vanished. All was clear and radi- 
ant; there was no more disharmony — and as 
sleep closed over me I wondered that anybody, 
anywhere, could ever have thought that God 
could be anything but Love. 

Did I sleep? I hardly know. It was better 
than sleep. I had the joy of sleep, but I also 
was aware, in some mysterious way, that I was 
asleep and very happy. Surely this may be a 
foretaste of the one aim of all true mystics — con- 
scious union with God, the real I of Love, the 
child of God, escaping for awhile, through one 
of His merciful palliatives, from the dominion of 
the unreal I, the child of Pain, escaping and in 
Him abiding — ^momentarily. In one of the 
spaces of conscious sleep — and they seemed to 
recur all through the night — I realised the full 
significance of those most comforting words of 
the great Law-giver who kept the faith through 
all, and who, knowing all, told His people that 



MORPHIA 183 

"Underneath are the everlasting arms." There 
they were at that moment waiting for me — in- 
credible tidings! I remembered the story of 
the child who realised the Everlasting Arms. 
The memory of the story obsessed me; how one 
night in church he was so tired, yet so fearful 
of falling asleep because his father's eyes, that 
stem, unapproachable father, were fixed upon 
him, angrily the boy thought. His father 
moved ; the little boy trembled. His father hated 
laziness and slackness in the face of duty. 
Then, wonder of wonders, suddenly he was lifted 
from his seat; his father's arms were under- 
neath him, round him. Thus without fear — in- 
deed with an exquisite joy and in great confi- 
dence — the little boy fell asleep in those com- 
prehending arms. So I fell asleep, sank into 
conscious, ineff'able sleep, under me the Ever- 
lasting Arms, that night of my awakening. And 
the morning? What of the morning? 

The morning came new again, and with hope. 
For I had slept, and to sleep is to live. I have 
had morphia five times since, and I have slept, 
but never again have the mystical experiences of 
that first night returned. You cannot fan the 
spirit into activity. It moves when it will, from 
hidden tides, whose origin is Eternity. The 



184 MORPHIA 

action of the morphia has become weaker with 
each application. The third of a grain has been 
augmented, but the effect still lessens. To-night 
I hope (vain hope, it was to hold me bound for 
two years) to take it for the last time. Its pur- 
pose has been fulfilled. It has helped me to 
jump the rubbish heap of discord, to see the en- 
trance-way of that green meadow of harmony 
where (this was the fancy of the spiritual school- 
men of old time) those linger, the just not yet 
made perfect, who are not yet ready to undergo 
the full effulgence of the Light. I am nearly 
restored. God and His agent, the poppy of the 
fields, be praised. Can it be true that suffering 
is the "terrible initiative caress of God," and 
that only through suffering can we really attain 
to Him? I still grope in the dark; but I have 
seen the gleam, have seen how it may be fol- 
lowed, and when I recall the credible visions of 
that night, their holy harmony, their quiet and 
radiant joy, I am certain that if something that 
is not I, and yet I, can have such experiences 
while still in the body, what things of incredible 
beauty and wonder may not happen when we 
have undergone God's final palliative — Death! 

\Asl re-read this confession, written five years 



MORPHIA 185 

ago, the presence of my Invisible Guide became 
more and more intimate, and I heard his voice, 
ample but low, saying — ''As with you there, so 
with us here, all is clear and radiant, and we, 
like you, wonder that anybody, anywhere could 
ever have thought that God could be anything 
but Love. Press on.'' J 



Ill 

SAFE 

BEING restored to health, having awakened 
to a new understanding of life, having now 
the companionship of my friend whenever I 
desired it, because I had learnt how to commune 
with him, I could dwell with composure on the 
mighty army, the young, the alert, the radiant 
who have given their lives for England and for 
freedom. I was happy, because deep in my soul 
I had the consciousness, the assurance that they 
are safe, that we are still with them, and they 
with us, loving and guiding all who support the 
struggle on earth. They are alive. These gal- 
lant dead have never died. We think of them 
with joy, not with grief, day by day, hour by 
hour, in the street, in the heart. So when the 
idea of erecting little shrines in our streets to our 
beloved took practical shape, and grew and 
grew, I busied myself with arranging for a shrine 
in the district which for me is ever hallowed with 
the earth-life of Jimmy. 

s(s Hs * He 3k sk 

186 



SAFE 187 

It is Gothic in form and quite simple. Above 
are the words: — 

Roll of Honour 

Shrine 

Pray for Them 

These men left to serve their 

King and Country in the Great 
War for Freedom 

Then follow the names inscribed on vellum, 
under a hinged-glass door, and against some is 
placed a small cross surmounted by a crown; 
against others the words: "Prisoner," or "Dis- 
abled." Beneath is a ledge for flowers. They 
must be garden-grown or wild, they must not be 
purchased, and residents in the district will 
tend them, in rotation, a week at a time. 

I was talking of the idea of these shrines to a 
peasant woman who had lost her son, and her 
comment was, "It is well." Presently she said, 
quite happily and confidently, "The boy is safe." 
I looked at her with reverence. Then I told 
her of the soldier-poet, Rupert Brooke, who died 
for England; told her of that second of his im- 
mortal sonnets. "He called it — Safety," I said. 

Next day I went to London to visit some of the 
shrines in the streets, and also to see a Roll of 



188 SAFE 

Honour, designed by Mr. Graily Hewitt, for the 
parish of Ickham, Kent. It is just right. The 
names are beautifully written (he is a profes- 
sional caligraphist) on a sheet of uncut parch- 
ment, which is framed, and bears the inscrip- 
tion : — 

"These Served the King in 
the year of our Lord 1914" 

But this is for an interior, a church, in a place 
secure from the elements. The attraction, the 
universal appeal of the People's War Shrines, 
is that they are placed in the open, in street or 
crossways, so that those going about their daily 
work may encounter them suddenly and be 
moved to doff the cap or murmur a prayer of 
gratitude, perhaps to kneel. Thus the spiritual 
world mingles, as it always should, with the 
material. 

Thinking in silent gladness of this symbol of 
faith that has sprung from the hearts of the 
people, I chanced to learn that the exhibition of 
War Shrines at Selfridge's had been extended 
for another week. Thither I hurried, the time 
being about an hour before sunset, and the 
weather radiant. 

Through the crowded ground floor, by the 



SAFE 189 

crowded lift, I ascended to the fourth floor, and 
there in the Palm Court, among the Shrines on 
either side of the organ, I found a sudden quiet- 
ness. It was almost like being in church. (A 
church in a shop ! Think of it. Strange things 
happen in this war!) Hats were lifted, faces 
grew fond, a discovery was stealing over them — 

I am Love. I am terribly slow. 
I require all time to grow. 
I am All you will ever know. 

Moved, I went away. My steps led me down 
a passage, up a slight ascent, and I found myself 
in what I must describe as the most wonderful 
place in the metropolis. It is called the Roof 
Garden. All around, far below, spread and 
growled our mighty London. Such a sight may 
be seen from the Monument, or St. Paul's, but 
there you are confined, a biped in a cage; here 
you are virtually as free as the birds, for the 
walks are spacious and diversified, with shrubs 
and alleys, and there is a sense of security under 
the vast sky. 

Far below, in little and big streets, beyond 
sight, beyond hearing, everywhere, shrines have 
already been placed: and there, towards the 
west, is Westminster, where I hope one day to 



190 SAFE 

see that great National Shrine, of which these 
innumerable little shrines are the outposts. 

I saw in the highway of the spiritual imagi- 
nation that great National Shrine completed, as I 
paced that Roof Garden high above London, 
when the sun was sinking in the west. All at 
once there came to me — it seemed to proceed 
from a Presence, lingering above London, re- 
luctant to leave his earth home, the Presence of 
that soldier-poet, Rupert Brooke, who went west 
for England. And to me came, as from some- 
one speaking close by, his last words to the 
world in his sonnet called "Safety": 

We have built a house that is not for Time's throwing, 
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever. 

War knows no power. Safe shall be my going, 
Secretly armed against all death's endeavour; 

Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall; 

And if these poor limbs die, safest of all. 

Some know that the idea expressed in these 
lines is a gleam of eternal truth; others may 
consider them a soporific invented by the in- 
genious brain of man to allay the intermittent 
pain of life. I, like a greater, am on the side 
of the angels, and on the side of that old peasant 
woman who said, ''The boy is safe/' 



SAFE 191 

[And the voice of The Invisible Guide con- 
tinued — ''Safe — because there can be no danger 
and no satiety where Love is. This, the old 
peasant woman knew because she was pure in 
heart. We, who have left you for a little while, 
have built a house that is not for Time's throw- 
ing. The boy is Safe."] 



IV 
A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 

THIS is what I saw on the highway of the 
spiritual imagination as I paced the Roof 
Garden. It took shape because I asked myself 
this question: What shall we do for the Fallen 
who have risen and abide? What shall we do 
for those who have given their lives for the 
Motherland, and for us, by land and by sea, 
through whose heroism and sacrifice ever invio- 
late is this happy breed of men, this blessed plot, 
this earth, this realm, this England? What 
shall we do for the Fallen who have Risen and 
abide? 

While I was reading a leading article on the 
advantages of moving Charing Cross Station to 
the Surrey side, and throwing across the Thames 
a magnificent Empire Bridge, the question was 
answered. Here shall arise our Imperial Me- 
morial of Gratitude to the Fallen, and Pride in 
the Empire. 

With that glorious scheme many of us had 
busied ourselves in pre-war days. Now it has 

192 



A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 193 

taken on a wider and a far deeper significance. 
The advantages of this reconstruction are al- 
most too obvious to be stated. The south side 
of the river, already in the way of becoming 
magnificent, in one comer, through the erection 
of the new County Council Hall, will at last have 
its own Embankment, and the name should be 
the Edward Embankment. It will present a 
vista of palaces and gardens from Westminster 
to Waterloo Bridge, thus making the Surrey 
frontage of the Thames as palatial as the Mid- 
dlesex frontage, and uniting North and South 
London into one organic whole. Waterloo and 
the new Charing Cross Station will adjoin each 
other on the Surrey side, feed each other with 
passengers, and be the great termini of traffic 
for South and West England. The approaches 
to the new bridge from either side will be trans- 
formed into wide spaces and spacious gardens. 
The new Empire Bridge, crossing the immemo- 
rial river, will lead to Imperial Avenue, there 
joined by two other great arteries of traffic from 
Westminster and Waterloo Bridges, it will con- 
verge into Imperial Place. Thus will be formed 
a real centre of London, the first city of the 
Empire, a new London, of which Empire Place 
and Empire Bridge will be the symbols. 



194 A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 

Look ahead seven years. Here is the dream 
which must come true. You will start from 
Buckingham Palace; you will drive down the 
historic Mall ; you will emerge through the gates 
to find the crowding buildings on either side 
swept away, with gardens there and statues and 
fountains ; you will sweep round to Northumber- 
land Avenue, passing on the way Le Soeur's su- 
perb statue of Charles I, turned so as to be in 
alignment with this new highway, facing towards 
the new Bridge (all forgiven and forgotten, an 
English King silently in line with England and 
the Empire) ; you will ascend the new North- 
umberland Avenue, see its arms opening, Em- 
bankment Gardens on either side, and here at 
the approach to the great bridge, rising above 
the traffic and the trams there will be an open 
space — Empire Place. This will be the centre 
of the new Imperial London. Here where the 
great bridge begins to stretch over the old river, 
with the Cross of St. Paul's shining to the east, 
and the towers of the Mother of Parliaments 
looming in the west — a real Thames-side London 
at last. 

It is no dream. The scheme has been dis- 
cussed and planned. For years men have 
worked for it. The Royal Institute of British 



A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 195 

Architects, the London Society, Mr. John Bums, 
Sir Aston Webb, Professor Beresford Pite, Mr. 
Paul Waterhouse, Lord Leverholme, have all 
realised the dream, and have pushed the business 
forward. In a recent exhibition of the Royal 
Academy, in the place of honour in the Archi- 
tectural Room, which so few visit, but wherein 
vast architectural ideas which affect us all are 
being materialised, the whole scheme was set 
forth pictorially by two talented architects — ^Mr. 
D. Barclay Niven and Mr. T. Raffles Davison. 

But, it may be asked, what has this scheme, 
splendid though it seems, to do with a Fellow- 
ship of the Fallen? Have a little patience. 

Various proposals as to the working out of 
the scheme have been made, but all the writers 
are agreed that the hideous Charing Cross Rail- 
way Bridge must be scrapped, that the station 
must be removed to the Surrey side, adjoining 
the Waterloo terminus, and that the new bridge 
and Imperial highway should take the form of a 
national memorial. Suggestions are many and 
confused. Some want a high-level instead of a 
low-level bridge ; others a double-decked bridge ; 
some a Belvedere with booths in the centre of 
the bridge; and one writer actually pleads for 
the retention of the wharves on the Surrey side. 



196 A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 

All such matters can be discussed later. Our 
aim now, this moment, is to agree upon the prin- 
ciple, the idea that this vast improvement in 
Thames-side London should be an Imperial mat- 
ter, a testimony to the consolidation of the Em- 
pire, of our gratitude to the Dominions beyond 
the seas, and our love for our soldiers, sailors, 
and airmen who have died for righteousness and 
freedom. As the idea is so vast and so out- 
branching I may be allowed to recapitulate the 
wide-flung aims of this Imperial Memorial and 
plead again for the unity of this comprehensive 
scheme, the heart, the impulse of which is our 
gratitude to the Fallen. 

Is it not plain that this great Imperial Memor- 
ial might include in one vast town-planning 
dream all the projects for improvements and 
memorials now before the public? 

1. The Channel Tunnel. 

2. The Memorial to King Edward. 

3. The Memorials to Lord Roberts and Lord 

Kitchener. 

4. The Kitchener Home for Disabled Officers. 

5. An Imperial Club. 

6. A Memorial to the Fallen. 

Let me first take the Memorial to the Fallen 
project, because it lifts the scheme out of a mere 



A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 197 

town-planning proposal, however grand and far- 
reaching, into a sacred and joyful duty in which 
every member of the Empire can share, every 
man, woman and child who proudly mourns a 
soldier or a sailor or airman. This could be 
achieved by erecting on the high ground in 
Empire Place, or near by, where Northumber- 
land Avenue ascends towards Empire Bridge — 
the suggested name for the new low-level bridge 
of five spans with a width of one hundred and 
twenty feet — a Memorial Chapel, dedicated to 
those who had died for their country. It should 
be small, but high, very simple, very beautiful, 
this shrine on a little hill, a place of peace in the 
highway of traffic, a consecrated spot above the 
Thames in the heart of London and the Empire, 
within view of the cross of St. Paul's and the 
towers of the Mother of Parliaments. Beyond, 
in line with the Chapel, would stretch the great 
bridge, joining North and South London, a sym- 
bol of union and equality, for the schenie pro- 
poses to make the Southern side as beautiful, 
wholesome and memorable as the Northern. 

In the centre of the chapel I would place a 
plain cross, and on it I would rest a crown. 
For the heart of man, whatever his shade of be- 
lief, has through the ages devised no sjmibols 



198 A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 

more appropriate to his undying hope than those 
of the Cross and the Crown. On the base of the 
cross I would insert in letters of gold these 
lines, by an English poet — Laurence Binyon — 
that are now the companions, bringing exceeding 
comfort, to a multitude : 

They shall. not grow old as we that are left grow old; 
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn: 
At the going down of the smi and in the morning 
We will remember them. 

And on the wall of the chapel, oriented to take 
the first rays of the rising sun on Empire Day, I 
would inset, in letters of gold, the plain state- 
ment that: "This chapel, the centre of the great 
Imperial scheme for broadening and beautifying 
the first city of the Empire, is dedicated to our be- 
loved, the flower of the Old Country, and the 
Dominions beyond the seas, who fell in the great 
war for Freedom." 

Wide, ascending subways, radiating from the 
adjacent pavements, would lead up to this shrine, 
and, on the walls of these bright subways all the 
cities, towns, and villages of the Empire would 
be invited to fix memorial tablets to those resi- 
dent in their neighbourhood who have made the 
great sacrifice and have given their lives for their 



A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 199 

country. Thus, in Lowell's strong, trembling 
lines, the whole Empire would perpetually — 

. . . Salute the sacred dead, 

Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 

Of morn on their white shields of Expectation. 

Above the chapel I would have a flag flying 
always, broidered with the sixty-four flags of the 
Empire, and, once a year, on Empire Day, it 
would be taken down, and a new flag, similar in 
design, would be raised in its place ; and the flag 
that had served its proud year would be pre- 
sented to a city of the Empire. 

So that all may share in this testimony of 
gratitude and gladness, I have suggested the for- 
mation of a Fellowship of the Fallen; that we 
allot seven years to the completion of this Imper- 
ial epic in town-planning — the Builder considers 
that the whole improvement might be completed 
in four years — that each year, on Empire Day, 
each member of the Fellowship of the Fallen 
shall agree to subscribe one guinea, and to con- 
tinue his subscription for seven years. So shall 
we honour the spirit and sacrifice of the British 
race. 

This shrine is the heart which will vitalise the 
out-stretching limbs of this Imperial Memorial. 



200 A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 

Into it comes naturally the making of the Channel 
Tunnel — that symbol of our faith and confidence 
in our great Ally. In the years to come Glar- 
ing Cross Station, the new Charing Cross on the 
Surrey side, will be the London terminus of an 
immense Continental traffic — Charing Cross to 
Bagdad, Petrograd to Charing Cross — and Em- 
pire Bridge will be the great highway along 
which all must pass into Imperial London. Sta- 
tion and bridge are one with the Channel Tunnel, 
the Chapel and the Statues, and each must be 
worthy of this great adventure of Peace — this 
Imperial Memorial. 

The other projiects for memorials and im- 
provements stand out in array, pleading for in- 
clusion in the vast unity. Behind the Embank- 
ment Gardens, between the Chapel and the Hotel 
Cecil, a beautiful shallow crescent of new build- 
ings is proposed (see "A Design for the Improve- 
ment of Charing Cross," by D. Barclay Niven 
and T. Raffles Davison) . Here might be placed, 
and no vista could be more appropriate or more 
delightful, the Kitchener Home for Disabled 
Officers, included in the Kitchener Memorial 
Fund, which has already made so fine a be- 
ginning; here, too, could stand the new Imperial 



A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 201 

Club — with Mr. Hughes as the first chairman — 
and a noble hall for meetings. 

On the two pylons at the approach to Empire 
Bridge on the Middlesex side, would stand impos- 
ing memorials to Lord Kitchener and Lord Rob- 
erts ; on the two pylons on the Surrey side, I sug- 
gest groups symbolising the gratitude of the Em- 
pire to her Dominions beyond the seas. In the 
pedestal of the Kitchener statue the famous letter 
might be inserted under glass, with a sentinel, 
one of Kitchener's army, perpetually guarding it. 

The high ground at the approach to Empire 
Bridge on the Surrey side, corresponding to 
Empire Place on the Middlesex side, should be 
called King Edward Place. There would stand 
his statue, with embellishments, looking towards 
the great bridge, typifying the united and victori- 
ous Empire he strove to save from the horrors of 
war. To the right would stretch the new Edward 
Embankment, and there the South-Eastem Rail- 
way could build the finest hotel in the world, 
facing the river, and connected by subways with 
the station; to the left hand would sweep the 
West wing of the Edward Embankment, linking 
the new County Council Hall to the King Edward 
Memorial. Here, surely, is a worthy monument 



202 A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 

to Edward the Peacemaker. Nobody takes the 
slightest interest in the Waterloo Place site for 
the King Edward statue. It touches no imagina- 
tion, it signifies nothing. But the memorial 
which I have proposed places him where he 
would have desired to have been, among his 
people, sharing their cross and their crown, their 
sorrow and their victory, facing the symbol of the 
new Empire which, we may well believe, he still 
watches and guides. Where would he choose to 
be rather than here, in this venerable and mem- 
ory-haunted spot, between Westminster and 
Waterloo, above Father Thames, the child of our 
hills, the vassal of our ocean, the sire of the 
island race that rules the seven seas, flowing here 
before we were, flowing when we are gone? 

Him, our seventh Edward, I see in a dream, 
standing there grave, glad, and watchful, facing 
the shrine, dedicated to his soldiers, sailors, and 
airmen, who died to save their Motherland. I 
see, above the Chapel, between the cross of St. 
Paul's and the towers of the Mother of Parlia- 
ments, the banner with the sixty-four flags pro- 
claiming unity and the ideals for which our 
beloved fought and died — Fellowship, Freedom, 
God. This National Memorial will eternally 
salute our sacred dead — "straight of limb, true 



A FELLOWSHIP OF THE FALLEN 203 

of eye, steady and aglow." Gone — but they 
shall not grow old, as we that are left grow 
old. Neither shall we of the Fellowship of the 
Fallen, beholding this Imperial Memorial, grow 
ever old in remembering them. 



[In the voice of The Invisible Guide there was 
a note of pity, ''It is all well meant,^' he said, 
''this human vision of pomp, circumstance and 
memory; but, oh, is not the spiritual idea of the 
Fallen who have Arisen enough? Understand 
that Love is spiritual, and you understand alL 
Understand! That is enough" J 



ANOTHER DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

ONE morning I received this postcard from 
Jimmy's brother — "Have raised our first 
crop of intensive peas, weeks before the common 
or garden farmers. Am bomiding with hope! 
Dad going strong! Meet me at the Convalescent 
Home at four o'clock to-morrow. I shall go 
straight from the garden in a cab, so you musn't 
mind my filthy condition." 

I called at the Convalescent Home at the hour 
of three, as I wished to have a talk with Papa 
Carstairs before Jimmy's brother's arrival; and 
found the old man pacing slowly up and down the 
room, looking like a valeted lion. His hair and 
beard had been trimmed; he wore a periwinkle 
blue silk dressing-gown, and he looked ten years 
younger. 

He grasped my hand. I winced at the 
strength of his clutch. "For two years I haven't 
walked like this," he said, in his deep base. 
"That boy is a genius. The enemy is defeated. 
Butler tells me that the boy's diagnosis was cor- 

204 



ANOTHER DAWN ON ROOF HILL 205 

rect in every particular. I suffered no pain 
after the operation ; I have suffered no pain since. 
The procedure was as undeviating as the com- 
pass. But I must not overtax my strength. 
With your permission I will rest awhile." 

He reclined on the bed, motionless as a king 
carved in alabaster; but there was something 
above kingliness in his look. Had he not been 
so recently valeted he would have been the ideal 
model for a Hebrew prophet. And with the re- 
juvenation of his body his tongue had loosened. 
The man of silence, under the shock of health, 
had become garrulous. 

"We shall have to call the boy by his bap- 
tismal name," said the old man. "He has made 
good: he shall no longer be known as Jimmy's 
brother, my Jimmy, my first-bom, the lover of 
my life, my soldier-saint. He will not grow old 
as we that are left grow old. But the younger 
boy has made good. He has Jimmy's purity of 
heart, but not his depth. It was because the 
boy was pure in heart that he entered the king- 
dom of knowledge against all those surgeon ex- 
perts who mishandled me. If he has the utter- 
ance of a gamin he has the heart of a child, that 
is why he prevailed. As Francis Bacon says. 
'Regnum Scientiad ut regnum Coeli non nisi sub 



206 ANOTHER DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

persona infantis intratur' — Into the Kingdom of 
Knowledge, as into the Kingdom of Heaven, 
whoso would enter must become as a little child." 

As I assented a cab drove up to the door, and, 
looking through the window, I perceived Jimmy's 
brother alighting with a hamper. Seeing me 
he shouted "Peas for Dad!" and rang the bell 
violently. 

He entered the room, odoriferous with inten- 
sive culture; his waterproof knee-boots (the real 
and the artificial leg were each encased) left 
dabs of mud upon the carpet, but he was, as he 
would say, "in the pink." His father gazed at 
him with wondering eyes; then he said, "Listen, 
my boy." 

Jimmy's brother and I sat huddled in our deep 
chairs, I attentive, he restless, while the old man 
delivered a prose-poem on the meaning of life 
and the unreality of death — partly his own, 
partly quotation. "Listen, isles unto me : and 
hearken, ye people, from far ... I have la- 
boured in vain, I have spent my strength for 
nought, and in vain; yet surely my judgment is 
with the Lord, and my work with my God." 

It might have been Isaiah speaking. 

Then he called us to him, and placed a hand 
on either of our heads and blessed us, and said — 



ANOTHER DAWN ON ROOF HILL 207 

"Thou hast made us for Thyself and our heart 
knows no rest until it rests in Thee." But you 
must find the way step by step. Jimmy shows 
the way upwards to the Master. 

Turning to Jimmy's brother he said, "You 
have a great gift. Use it as Jimmy would have 
employed such a gift. Cultivate him: he will be 
with you, as I shall, if you direct your thoughts 
rightly." 

Jimmy's brother writhed, and at the first 
opportunity scrambled to his feet and presented 
the basket of peas. 

He kissed his father. The old man conducted 
us to the head of the stairs, and as we descended 
he kicked out his legs to emphasise their power 
of movement. 

Jimmy's brother dropped me at Waterloo. 
He was silent on the journey, but before we 
parted he recovered his spirits and said — "Dad's 
another of your Luka Johnnies, isn't he?" 

Sif Stf ^ii ^tf ^Sc 2i£ 

A feeling of elation possessed me on the home- 
ward journey, a sensation of profound peace and 
promise. I took a circuitous path through the 
woods. All the way I thought of Jimmy, and 
was able to converse with him. 

Through a long evening I re-read his letters 



208 ANOTHER DAWN ON ROOF HILL 

and Diary, and looked at his pictures, and after 
midnight I left the house and took the familiar 
walk to the summit of Roof Hill. Emotion had 
been quite weaned from me. Patiently, persis- 
tently I affirmed the presence of Jimmy and all 
who have passed on, and denied the power of the 
act of death to arrest the development of spiritual 
activities: patiently, persistently I asserted that 
evil has no dominion over the ageless, deathless 
power of spirit. In such sane conversation the 
hours passed. 

I paced the hill, but I was no longer a Sentinel, 
I was the companion of an Invisible Host, and 
near, so near, quickening and encouraging me 
was my Invisible Guide. 

Dawn came. I was composed and happy, un- 
f atigued, ready for the day. I spoke three words 
aloud — "Jimmy, I understand." 



THE END 



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